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“Ah! Entre-deux-Eaux”. You have an excellent mayor!” a member of the Saint Dié walking group announced in the middle of the countryside. “Chaxel. He used to be a teacher, and he knows everyone.”

It was a surprise to hear that our commune of some 450 inhabitants was known in the big world of urban Saint Dié. There the mayor, Pierret, is known by everyone, having shaken hands with everyone (and promptly forgotten them) and having ensured his photograph is inserted at least once on every page of the town’s monthly newsletter, showing him standing prominently in front of each local group, road improvement, statue and municipal flowerbed. “How are you?” he once breathlessly asked me, pumping my hand, while pounding along the corridor of the high-speed train. The train was, at the time, stationary in Saint Dié station where he was publicising to the supposedly-awed citizens his role in enabling the TGV service to be extended to “his” town. He was at the far end of the carriage by the end of his three-word query as to my well-being.

We recently ran into our own mayor in the middle of the forest. He’d been surveying some of his (personal not commune) softwood trees and gloomily assessing how many it would be worth cutting for sale this year. We discussed the economic situation and its disastrous effect on the building trade and timber industry. He told us that the farm we had passed had changed hands recently and that the pretty grey donkeys which had come rushing up in their grey hoods (fly protectors for the eyes) belonged to the new owner. We checked that the forest track we were following still led to some lakes we had seen on the map (as tracks can change with logging requirements). “Ponds”, he corrected gently, and assured us that the track did indeed lead to them and beyond to the next village. He also warned us that the next day would be a bad day to stroll in the forest as it would be the first day of the hunting season, and we discussed the number of boar and game and the fact that there are now only eight (authorised) huntsmen in the village due to the expense involved. As we walked on, we were sorry to find that we couldn’t get near the ponds as they were enclosed by a fence, and the track veered away. And then we spotted some huge wrought iron gates through the trees, – the kind that would usually open onto the drive of an Edwardian mansion. But there was no drive on either side or fine house beyond. What a shame our mayor wasn’t still with us to provide information about the mystery gates in the forest.

I doubt if the Mayor of Saint Dié is ever to be seen in the forests around Saint Dié. Presumably he spends most of the week in Paris where he is a lawyer. And after all Saint Dié is rather a small pond for a former Secretary State for Industry. However he was back at the beginning of October with all his academic pals for the International Geography Festival which he has instituted to put Saint Dié (like America) on the map. This was the 19^th festival, and its theme was (literally and wordily) “Between wars and conflicts: the planet under tension”. The invited country of honour was Japan. Any connection?

As well as all the worthy visiting academics, the cookery demonstrations predictably included rice (a whole session) and sushi, and the street events included a tea ceremony and a dragon. Japanese drumming in the cloisters was pretty impressive and John enjoyed the koto player in the old church. Meanwhile the local history group recreated a forest trench from World War One beneath the war memorial, and their lectures interpreted the theme broadly, including the conflict between a small village and an encroaching big town (Saint Dié, of course, but the mayor was not there to hear it – he was probably swanning around with the Japanese Consul General and the Japanese Ambassador).

I wonder if there will ever be a 20^th International Festival of Geography. Mayor Pierret is no doubt a political cousin of Peter Mandelson, having surfaced from previous corruption scandals (the last being the Lyonnaise des Eaux contract bribery allegations). But two days after the Geography Festival closed, the Tribunal Administratif declared the Saint Dié election to have been what 1066 and all that would have called “dull and void”. This was due to “une irrégularité”. Several days before the first round of the elections, the municipality had sent a letter to 600 inhabitants of the social housing in the Kellerman area, promising a repayment of excess rental charges following a successful renegotiation of the heating maintenance contract (and before the company managing the area knew of the decision). In the second round of voting Pierret scraped through by 156 votes. It remains to be seen what happens after an appeal. Meanwhile one of the main items on the Mayor’s website (above even the Geography Festival, but below “My life as a Minister”) remains a video on how to live as both a Christian and a freemason.

Here in Entre-deux-Eaux life continues more quietly. Indeed it has been so peaceful that, for several days in the early evening, young deer were coming out of the forest to graze in the meadow by the stream. We haven’t seen them since the hunting season opened, but hope that’s due to prudence rather than extinction. The hot air balloon from Saulcy has been able to fly in the pleasant September evenings, and has made a colourful landing in the same meadow. With the better weather, the meadows have had their second cut and all is safely baled and wrapped in pale green plastic and the cows are back grazing the field above the farmhouse. The more distant maize fields have also been cut to provide winter fodder, bringing heavy tractor trailers lumbering up and down our lane to Farmer Duhaut’s big new maize store. Our own colourful harvest adorns the windowsills – pumpkins and squash, ready for seasonal soup-making. In the orchard the crows seem to have developed a liking for a walnuts, and deadly fireblight has struck the quince, pear, medlar and some apple trees.

We had a further update on E2E current affairs when the senior commune employee came round, as he always does in September, to read the water meter. We admired the way the one of the village crosses (the one which had allegedly been knocked down by a passing lorry) had been restored with a new bronze statue on its stonework. He also assured us that the cross that had been absent for a number of years from the end of our road would soon be restored again, but said that another one was in store awaiting a decision about what to do with that road junction. So some of our mayor’s pre-election promises are being fulfilled. But the commune employee gave us a very funny look when we asked when our part of the road would, as the mayor had promised, be resurfaced. That had obviously been a vain promise! We should have asked what was happening abut the great sewerage debate, as a questionnaire was issued soon after the almost unanimous re-election of our mayor and council.

September has been a fine month, sunny but not too hot, for finding new walks around the commune. First there was the annual village walk (and I still enjoy coming across the refreshment tables along the way. This time the first pit stop was along the track at the top of the field above our house!). Another still day, we came across a young man trying in vain to get his paraglider airborne among the hay bales on a small hill behind the football ground. Across a road and past a farm with a barking dog we came across Bluebeard’s mobile clothing and household linen shop parked outside another farm. What a name! It conjured up pictures of a plump farmer’s wife opening up the wardrobe within Barbe Bleue’s colourful van, never to be seen again.

This year I (but not John, as he is keen to point out) became eligible for the club of the Ancients of E2E. So on the third Thursday of September I went with Danielle Laine and her sister Giselle (the mother of Farmer Duhaut) and got scrutinised by all my fellow-ancients. Our mayor came round to chat with every one, as if he was really pleased to see them all enjoying the gossip and cards together again. The highlight of the afternoon was the birthday cake – or cakes, as there were 4 birthdays. But Danielle was definitely the winner of the best cake accolade. Normally everything in her household has been grown or reared on the premises. So everyone was amazed that this time she had made an exception. She tartly said it was because you only have a 70^th birthday once. She had commissioned a cake from her favourite baker over in Anould – a glorious eclair and cream confection.

Madame la presidente also encouraged me to join the inter-communal bingo being hosted by the E2E Ancients in October, – only four cards, she decided, as I would struggle with the numbers in French. Alas, with my four cards I failed to stagger home with one of the big prizes – no tumble drier, panel radiator, vacuum cleaner, raclette, TV or hideous bouquet of flowers. And not even a more portable trophy like shopping vouchers, restaurant vouchers, chocolates or a lethal-looking bottle of home-made colourless fruit liqueur. But the prize which had been saved until the end sounded the best: two travel vouchers for 250 euros each for anywhere, anytime. The concentration was intense, punctuated only by a querulous “What did she say? Twenty six?” “No thirty six” “That’s what I said, twenty six!” and much irritated shushing. Suddenly there was a squeak right next to me, and Danielle’s hand shot up. Entre-deux-Eaux’s very own Mme Laine had won the two travel vouchers! She was stunned, and unable to say a word all the way home. I would have loved to have heard Pierre’s comments. Having been born in the next village and driven a lorry (probably locally) for the nearby builders’ merchants, he has seen quite enough of the world, – and he didn’t like Algeria and all its foreigners when he had to do his national service there. I can imagine him suggesting a swap with the tumble drier! Danielle, however, has travelled with Giselle to the Atlantic coast beyond Bordeaux – nearly Spain, in fact – to visit Giselle’s married daughter. So who knows?

Ever since our mayor organised the gros objets collection (last newsletter) and John had a major clear-out of his workshop, he has been busy building shelves and fixing storage units and drawers. Finally when John and Wendy were over at the end of August, the two Johns disappeared into the workshop, for John2 (whose own workshop is devoted largely to wood-turning projects) to practice joints with the impressive machinery and for John1 to start work on a bedside cabinet for Leila and a bathroom cabinet for us. Since then he has made another bedside table for the farmhouse, which was christened when Shelagh and Melvin stayed this week.

We did manage to drag the two Johns out for some wet walks and some good meals, a hearty one at the Saint Alexis (with a large party of huntsmen sitting under the awnings outside – wild boar are endemic there and hunting is allowed year-round) and a gourmet one at the Frankenbourg. And we also had some sunshine for the Sunday flea-markets, where the two Johns examined all the old wood-working tools in sight.

In fact the end-of-season flea-markets have been fun this year. Beneath rain-laden skies above the abbey cloisters at Senones, our next visitors, Viv and Paul scooped up various one euro bargains (fish casserole, apron, serviette holder) before we retired to the village bar for coffee. We also managed a picnic outside the abbey at Moyenmoutier and a short walk before it rained. Viv pointed out the disparity between the small plaque outside the mairie to the large number of deportees who never returned at the end of the war, and the considerably larger plaque to the American who set up a canteen for the troops. John and I passed another war-time tribute after we’d enjoyed a flea market at Bertrimoutier and taken a picturesque route back: a ruined farmhouse and memorial in the fields where 52 members of the local resistance were attacked and killed.

Etival-Clairfontaine’s first-ever flea market was held around the old abbey church and the surrounding picturesque houses. Above the stalls against the abbey wall we could see some interesting looking stained glass. So afterwards we looked in the church, with its romanesque columns, baroque frontage and modern glass, all reconstructed after the dynamiting of the old church in 1944. And at one of the last flea markets of the year, last Sunday, we made the most of the autumn sunshine, sitting outside one of the barns, eating our chips and surveying the bric-a-brac, antiques, pumpkin displays, and vivid autumn leaves.

Autumn has really arrived now. The trees are beautiful. Lunching this week with Shelagh and Melvin at Senones, the menu included pumpkin soup, venison and apple dessert. And back here, in the evenings, the log stove is lit and we watch the flames … And that reminds me. Perhaps, now we’ve brought in the logs from the ill-fated apple tree to dry off, we should ask Mayor Chaxel for a delivery of hardwood logs. Now you couldn’t expect the deposed Mayor Pierret to come round delivering from his log-trailer!

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It was a perfect sunny afternoon after a week of muggy heat punctuated by thunderstorms. Under the trees next door, two immaculately groomed horses waited patiently with their calèche, as cars hurtled up the road and parked along the edge of our field. It was Cécile and Cédric’s wedding day. We scanned the guests from our attic window, as we were uncertain of French dress code, and promptly changed out of our colourful summery clothes into more formal black and white. As the calèche set out we dashed downstairs, John to take photos from the first floor window and me to wave. It was an idyllic picture: the calèche driver and his boy in black suits and slouch hats, the cart horses with their mauve and cream posies, Cécile in an elegant white sheath dress and their little daughter in a matching dress and sun hat, her sister Carole’s two children and papa Gerard (who’d changed out of his shorts and T-shirt into a suave dove-grey suit). The cars turned and followed slowly behind, hooting, as is the custom, and we joined the rear of the procession down our road to the village centre.

The first ceremony, the obligatory legal one, was held in the mayor’s parlour with family and close friends. Parked prominently outside was Cédric’s old white van, with a life size dummy suspended from gallows on the back. We were amused to see that it was dressed in a blue and yellow post office uniform, and held together with post office tape, Cédric being an employee of la Poste. The hanged man traditionally represents the end of the groom’s life of freedom.

Through the open windows we could hear Farmer Duhaut (who is also one of our two deputy mayors) reciting the obligatory clauses of the constitution relating to marriage duties and obligations. The civil ceremony completed, it was only a short step up past the war memorial and into the village church for the (optional) mass.

The Entre-deux-Eaux church is now only used for four sparsely attended services a year, plus funerals and weddings. So it was good to see it well-maintained inside and packed. The older members looked a bit shocked as the three professional singers from Alsace launched into rhythmical gospel songs (in impeccable English), with everyone clapping and swaying in time, followed by applause. We were amused that the song after they’d exchanged their wedding vows was “Let my people go!” as it was a bit late for a bid for freedom. Sadly, few of the congregation could have been in a state of grace, including us, for only a handful of old ladies responded to the invitation to altar so the priest had a lot of wine to finish off before he could conclude the service. As the couple came out of the church, ephemeral rainbow bubbles were blown, rice was tossed (noisier than confetti), and a lot more photos were taken.

The vin d’honneur (with accompanying nibbles) was held on St Léonard, four and a half kilometres from here, so the horses set off with the bride, groom and small children in the calèche, and a long procession of cars followed slowly behind, more hooting. It was all very picturesque, thanks to the sunshine. And fortunately we didn’t meet any cars coming in the other direction along the narrowest stretch of the route. The tables were decorated with buttercup yellow cloths, and spread with delicacies and slim glasses of sweet wine. Large cottage loaves had been scooped out and filled with sandwiches, and more warm tasty canapés and patisseries were brought round as people chatted. Our drive home was faster than our drive there! But at some stage the family and friends would have returned, hooting, to the village hall at Entre-deux-Eaux for the wedding feast and dancing.

Traditionally the bride and bridegroom slip away from the festivities, but their friends go in search of them, bearing champagne or wine and hammer on the door and bang dustbin lids until the groom is forced to get up and invite them in. When Cécile’s sister Carole got married, some of the inebriated wedding guests stopped one house early and banged with great urgency on our farmhouse door. We weren’t there, and our visitors were very bewildered when they opened the door to these revellers who refused to go away. The fact that the “bride” had turned into a different woman, and was suddenly eight months pregnant seemed to make no difference to their clamour! However, this time, we slept soundly through it all the nocturnal comings and goings.

Our road hasn’t seen so many cars up and down it since the annual gros objets collection. Now our mayor’s aim is for no one in the commune to produce any rubbish which can’t be personally burned, composted, buried or recycled via the paper and glass bins outside the village shop. For if everyone was efficient, as in the old days, it would save the commune any rubbish collection fees. However most people manage to produce at least one full plastic bag each week, though Mme Laine would always win our road’s prize for the smallest bag. And there are always those categories of rubbish that the dustmen won’t take. So once a year there is the special collection.

We’d cleared a few things from the storage section of the attic when laying traps for and clearing up after Fluffy the fouine. So the day before the collection, John put out a cumbersome reclining long-unused TV aerial. Then as the collection coincided with his desire to re-organise his workshop atelier, he started clearing and putting out boxes of old nails and rusty files, tractor tyres, a tangle of ancient electrical switches and wires from our predecessor, the village electrician, and, after some debate, some of the small-holding’s historical items like the heavy chains for the oxen. Whilst doing so he noticed the steady drive-past of assorted vans and lorries, all appraising the scrap. Some asked permission to pick over what they saw, and others just took what they fancied.

One battered white lorry had already taken parts of the old cars that Ludo, the Laines’ grandson, had been gutting for his illicit car repair business (which I hasten to add has been recently registered and legitimised). So John took the two men (one small dark and plump in dungarees, and the other younger and presumably his son) round the back and showed them the heavy metal axle under the hazel tree. They agreed to come back the next day for it, as they hadn’t room at present. I was a little worried by the way the younger of the two kept eyeing up the old tractor. Not for disposal, I repeated firmly. All afternoon the cars and trailers cruised past. More people must have rummaged after dark, as by morning, we had only one small box remaining for the official collectors. The white lorry duly returned (loaded with more of Ludo’s car bodies), and the younger man looked wistfully at the tractor again, before doing most of the sawing up and loading of the axle. When I referred afterwards to the two men, John looked surprised. “The older one was a woman.”

From time to time we need to take either Bluto or Snowy over to Epinal to be serviced, and usually take advantage of the expedition to go to BricoDepot (the cheapest of the DIY warehouses), the Ducs de Lorraine restaurant, and an exhibition. This time we also inspected Nicola and John’s boat, which is temporarily moored there on its journey from Holland to the Aude where they now live, and, after a leisurely lunch, we went into the tourist office for a town plan (as we haven’t quite linked up different parts of the town). By chance a town tour was about to set out and the guide was able to answer a couple of points which had cropped up during my researches into Indian soldiers in the area in the last war. No, he didn’t know where the liberating Americans were quartered, but he did know the location of the old POW camp. I’d read that a large number of captured Indian soldiers had been held there by the Germans until the camp was accidentally bombed by the Americans on 11^th May 1944, leaving 64 casualties. Others had escaped and roamed the countryside until reaching safety or being rounded up by the advancing allies a few months later. He showed me on our newly acquired map the site of the barracks where they’d been held, and then asked if I’d like to know where they were buried. John is becoming resigned to being dragged round and photographing graveyards, so, as there were no exhibitions of interest, we spent the next hour in the municipal cemetery on the outskirts of Epinal.

Epinal is the capital of our département, so you would think its cemetery would be large and well tended. It was certainly large, but on that hot dusty day it had a run-down and disorganised air. The guide had said that the war graves were at the back, so we walked right up to the end wall and along the top, finding only the normal monumental family graves and a disreputable area with rusting lids which looked like mass paupers’ graves. We walked back down and found a separated walled Jewish area at the bottom. Going through another wall there was an area of French war graves, with their cement crosses, which John deduced were support staff from the local garrisons. But the whole place seemed deserted, with no one to ask. Finally I found a discreet green gate in a hedge, with a path which wound through bushes and behind a gardeners’ building to an immaculately mown area with neat rows of crosses of French soldiers. Then right at the end under the shade of tall trees, was a line of elegantly sculpted Commonwealth War Graves headstones commemorating Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and a Christian; cooks, sweepers and a water carrier, as well as frontline fighters. And there were three from the regiment I was particularly interested in, King George V’s own Bengal Sappers and Miners. I had to shout over the high wall to guide John from the garrison graves to this very secret enclosure. We realised later, that if the tricoleur had not been drooping limply in the heat between the trees, we might have located the area sooner.

The Sunday flea markets continue as usual, with occasional ones on other festive days. One of our favourite ones was on Bastille Day, July 14^th at Ban-de-Laveline. It always has a few special touches, like a local history stall, the fire station’s ancient fire-fighting equipment on display, and a brass band. Although we haven’t bought much this year (there’s a limit to the amount of bric-a-brac we can house), I was delighted to find a framed print of “The Muses” by Nabis painter Maurice Denis. It was an advertisement for the Musée d’Orsay, which we’d really enjoyed on our Paris trip a few years ago. So now if you come to stay, you will be greeted in the farmhouse hallway by no lesser personages than the muses. That evening, the weather was uncertain, so we didn’t go to any of the firework displays. But late on the sky was suddenly illuminated, and from the attic window we got a perfect view of St Leonard’s fireworks rising and cascading – the same window from which, at the beginning of this newsletter, we were watching Cécile’s wedding cortège organising itself.

And thinking of weddings reminded me that this weekend must have been our wedding anniversary, though as usual it had slipped our minds. At John’s 60^th birthday party it was suggested that we ought to repeat the house party in a couple of years. We haven’t quite got round to organising that … but how about a house party at the beginning of August next year? We could start a trend for 35^th anniversaries! Are you free then? Or does May or October appeal more? Let us know your thoughts.

Au revoir!

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Easter hares, sun-drenched flea-markets and canopied terraces of diners outside the Saint Alexis are my memories of Easter 2007. We were looking forward to an equally festive Easter 2008. My old school-friend Jessica flew over before Easter, and we planned to pick up her husband, Mark, on Good Friday from his mathematical conference in the Black Forest. We envisaged driving through the vineyards on either side of the Rhine, perhaps stopping for a riverside lunch, crossing the Rhine on a small ferry boat and exploring a bit of the Black Forest. We’d had some light snow, so had taken some pretty walks in the hills on the Wednesday and Thursday. But throughout Thursday the predictions of high winds and more snow became increasingly worrying. During that night, as the winds strengthened, we could hear the trees tossing violently. We awoke to find more snow falling and very poor visibility. Over the hot cross buns which John had made the day before (not a local tradition) we decided that the roads would be hazardous, the countryside views shrouded in cloud, and any exploration damp and windswept. So Mark was consigned to the “safe, comfortable and reasonable” Deutsch Bahn/SNCF via Strasbourg to Saint-Dié.

On Easter Sunday, we’d planned to lunch at the restaurant Belle Vue in Saulxures. By then the wind had dropped and the snowscapes were inviting. We hadn’t been there for a while, so hoped it would come up to standard, as our visitors had recently been wined and dined at top London restaurants. We had a patchwork of memories of the Belle Vue with different friends and family, including a leisurely sunny summer meal out on the decking with a huge French family table next to us, presided over by grandfather, with children chasing round afterwards. This time, with the snow all round, and Easter Sunday being a popular day for family meals out, all available downstairs rooms were packed with tables, and lots of well trained extra young waiters and waitresses had been drafted in. They still managed to keep the air of an elegant but friendly family hotel (perhaps it was aided by the new décor, with paintings based on old hotel and staff photographs, bills and publicity). The special Easter Day menu was a five course one, with a choice of two dishes for each course. Just to make your mouth water, after a mackerel pate pre-starter, we all had the foie gras with apple and endive starter, then I had some delicious black tiger prawn kebabs with pastrami and ginger vinaigrette and the others had scallops. The main course was veal with broad beans or stuffed lamb and white beans and then came some tasty goats’ cheese. The desert was a chocolate and almond slice with caramel ice-cream or a pineapple strudel with yoghurt sorbet. The coffee came on their trade-mark wooden tray with two different coffees (arabica and arabica-robusta) each. As you can imagine, it was a delightfully leisurely affair.

On the way back we stopped in the old but run-down village of Senones for a short post-prandial stroll and then drove back through beautiful rolling snowscapes in the late afternoon sunshine. In fact the snow at that height was so beautiful, that on Easter Monday Mark and Jessica set off on a 10km walk up to the blanketing snow around the forest chapel of Sainte Claire and the old fortress at Spitzemberg.

It was a good thing that we had not accompanied them, because that was the morning that my mother’s Care Home in Nottingham phoned to say, with great sadness, that my mother had very peacefully died that morning, having chatted to her favourite staff and said that she was feeling better. She had a long and full life (she was 96), and her funeral evoked many happy memories and stories.

As I always think of her recent years being Nottingham based, I was surprised at how many people who phoned, wrote or came to the funeral, remembered her mainly from the twelve summers she spent with us in Entre-deux-Eaux. And, since we’ve been back here, there have been so many unexpected reminders of the little things she enjoyed in and around Entre-deux-Eaux.

Shortly after we got back, we went to one of our favourite flea markets at the Foire au Lard (smoked bacon) at Saint-Rémy. It was the first really hot day of the year, and we hadn’t thought to bring sun hats. We didn’t have any interesting “finds”, but as we were strolling back, the brass band struck up a rousing tune, and I had a vivid flash-back to my mother sitting happily in the beer tent of another vide-grenier, listening to their brass band. She surprised me by saying she’d always loved brass bands, and recalled “The Sing” – a big choral event in the field next to her childhood home in Yorkshire.

Chatting with friends, they also recalled how in our early days here, we used to try and persuade Toby and Leila (and any visiting children) to go down to the village shop to get the bread each morning, to practise their French. Like most teenagers they were amazingly resistant to the idea of a) practising a foreign language and b) getting up early. And anyway it was always my mother who was up and showered before anyone else and had set off for the day’s supply of baguettes, and a chat with the shopkeeper. And of course my mother had a great air of confidence and no hesitation at all as to the quality of her French. She would have been mortified by our neighbour Danielle Laine’s opinion that she couldn’t speak French. This opinion arose from a linguistic misunderstanding (which I must have recounted many times since, so apologies for the repetition), when instead of asking if M. Laine and his hunting posse had killed a boar (tué un sanglier), they thought that she had implied that he had been out hunting down the Englishman (tué un anglais).

Danielle had other equally down to earth judgements, and was never intimidated by my mother’s occasionally headmistressly air (which probably didn’t translate itself into French). Every holiday my mother would set up her easel and painting stool in some corner of the village and sketch the old houses, farms, village crosses, water troughs, church and school. And most years she would make a Christmas card from one of her drawings or paintings. One Christmas I was greeted by a very indignant neighbour. “That’s not Entre-deux-Eaux”, she accused. I’ve walked Pierre all round, and at no point do the houses look like that. It’s just not true!” And indeed, my mother had made various artistic adjustments to the perspective and layout.

On another occasion, after she’d painted the Vozelle’s farm, and Mme Vozelle had peered with interest over her shoulder, she thoughtfully arranged for the picture to be framed for them. With the true country instinct that you don’t accept something for nothing, Mme Vozelle asked if we’d like some eggs in return. As it happened, we were more in need of some manure for the garden, and they had an enormous muck heap. I’m not quite sure what my mother thought of our receiving a generous pile of muck in return for her artistry.

Leila came over a few weeks ago, along with friends Ann and David (the Harts) who’ve also been coming here ever since we bought the farmhouse, so of course that was a time of looking back and getting out the photograph albums, to settle such questions as, “Which year was the total eclipse and our trip to the Le Corbusier church?” “Was that the same year as that we had so many people at dinner that we had to set up the trestle tables in the barn?” So out came the photo albums.

There indeed were the photos of the Le Corbusier church at Ronchamps, whose calm atmosphere and Bible open at the Ecclesiastes passage about there being a time for everything, inspired her to talk for the only time about what kind of funeral she would like when her time came.

There, too, were numerous photos of large meals on the terrace, or in the shade of the old (converted) wash-house or the big barn or, more recently on the new balcony. We’ve got so used to the grey tiles John laid on the balcony and the grey railings which M. Hollard erected round it (not to mention the heavy sun blind which John, Derek, Roger and Ann installed) that I’d forgotten the summer of 2003, when my mother was here in glorious weather. By then the new upstairs kitchen was in full use, but the balcony was bare and precipitous. We had to hastily amass all our pots of plants and arrange them round the edge of the balcony, to stop my mother from accidentally approaching the edge as we dined al fresco and plunging off into the rubble below.

However there was one nasty fall which we were also reminded of while Leila, Ann and David were here. As rain was forecast, we arranged to visit one of the old silver mines outside Sainte Marie-aux-Mines (the town where the Patchwork festival is held). Many years ago we’d visited one of the mines near the town centre. The photo album shows us all (except my mother) togged up in hard hats and waterproofs. Another memorable shot shows my mother taking a photo nearby. It must have been only seconds before she stepped backwards, tripped over a protruding stone behind her, and hit her head, which of course bled spectacularly. Fortunately she didn’t roll into the fast-flowing stream just behind and I think our friend Margrit, who was with us on that visit, thought we were all very callous, as we cleaned up the blood, set her on her feet again and continued our visit.

On that occasion we had all been shocked by the cramped condition in which the miners worked in the sixteenth century and the slow progress they made with hand-tools. So this time we chose to visit the Gabe Gottes mine which had also been started in the sixteenth century, but enlarged by explosives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when not just silver, but also arsenic was sought. We drove behind our guide’s car much further up the wooded hillside to this mine (the whole mountainside must riddled with pits and holes and tunnels from successful and unsuccessful searches). It would have been a really long walk to and from the workings each day. Indeed our guide insisted that more accidents occurred on the way to and from the mines than within them. In a wooden hut, we togged up, and were really glad of the wellingtons, as the tunnels were running with water, and even in these widened tunnels the hard hats and waterproofs were welcome. After threading our way through tunnels, we could see some strange illuminated shapes ahead. A bizarre installation had recently been created by two artists in the deep arsenic pit, entitled “moon garden.” – a creative use of plastic bottles, tubes, bones, metal springs etc.

We had also witnessed a creative use of plastic bottles the previous day, Sunday, vide-grenier day. We’d been to three flea markets. At the first small one Dave had bought a magnificent old mechanical calculator from a defunct Saint Dié firm, Leila had bought a Paddington Bear book in French and I’d backed rapidly away from a stall with a snake. At the second fair at Senones we’d looked at old cars, line-dancing and the presentation of wine awards (as well as the remains of the old palaces and monastery), had sampled some pies and wines and Ann had bought some delicious elderflower wine, and I had bought a rhubarb plant. We took the small road over the hills from Senones (which had been so beautiful in the snow two months earlier), to the hamlet of Denipaire, which always includes children’s projects in their flea market. As we settled down to lunchtime chips and sausages, we noticed the rocket stall. Now David is a rocket enthusiast who has built many innovative rockets over the years to launch at an annual Scottish gathering of enthusiasts. So we all went over to inspect and photograph the boys who were launching their plastic-bottle rockets. It all looked much more fun that the hook-a-duck type attractions more usually provided for children at fairs. And we gather that David is now preparing a short article on the Denipaire rockets.

As we looked back through the photo albums, we realised how many activities my mother had participated in, with her camera at the ready to record events like the drainage excavations, the new bath being carried up the ramp, Toby and John installing the new garage door, the Laines sawing up logs for us, the cows ambling between cowshed and pasture, bulbs being planted, trees being felled, games of boules and Toby, Leila and friends on bicycles. There were also lazy-looking lake-side scenes, featuring Alistair’s or John’s canoe, people with books and my mother at her easel. So it seemed very appropriate when Ann and David spent their last day canoeing on lac Gérardmer.

Another tradition was revived the following week when Toby and his girl friend Stella were with us, and got the bikes down from their hooks in the barn, and, punctures repaired, cycled round the villages between rain showers. Toby also remembered the wood fired oven-baked bread we used to get (before dentists’ bills halted our consumption of baguettes), so we made a special stop at that bakery, but alas it was not as good as he remembered. On their first day, Stella’s birthday, we went to the elegant Ducs de Lorraine restaurant in Epinal, but after a rather wet week we thought another meal out would be fun, and we got the last table at the busy Frankenbourg, which is fast becoming a tradition with them, and was pronounced their favourite still.

Last Thursday, after all our visitors had left, it was the day of the Sainte Marguerite pensioners’ barbecue, which we’d almost forgotten about. The president of the association owns a wooded family plot beside a small fishing lake, which is ideal for barbecues. Every year the group seem to acquire a new length of tenting, so this year there was enough to shelter tables for 80 guests, and the cold food preparation area, while the aperitif table and smoking barbecue remained outside. There was much discussion of the weather, as rain was forecast for the afternoon. These meals are a great occasion for memories and reminiscence as former neighbours get together, and between the courses we heard about garden crops, wood prices v. oil prices, camping holidays of yesteryear and more recent trips to Tunisia (where the French singing shocked the guide). Pudding must have been served around 3.30 or 4 (one looses track on such occasions) when it was getting cooler, and the first of the rain started. Soon after coffee, the accordion player arrived and the singing started (led by the singer who’d disgraced himself in Tunisia). “I think it’s time to go”, whispered John as a few other people left. We were safely in the car on the way home when the next rain shower hit – but maybe by then everyone back at the lakeside was sufficiently insulated by anoraks, wine and the tent (and perhaps the president’s bottle of potent home-distilled pear liqueur had done the rounds by then), so no longer cared about the weather.

Finally, one of those moving vignettes of county life here. Yesterday we walked with many of the same pensioners (clearly fully recovered from their bucolic fête champêtre) above Corcieux. That area is nostalgic for us, as it is where we were camping that hot summer when we saw our Entre-deux-Eaux house in the estate agent’s window. After about an hour of leisurely walking we approached an isolated abandoned farmhouse, surrounded by a meadow of mauve bistort and white (lesser butterfly?) orchids. And then a white-haired, smiling, gentle old man appeared, clutching a lamp. Despite the shuttered windows the house was not deserted. Now in his eighties, he’d lived there all his life, solitary since the death of his parents, and, more recently, the sale of his cows to neighbours. He seemed delighted to have company passing along the footpath, and chatted about various farms, before waving us on our way. Later we caught up with him taking a box of cat food in his old red car to a neighbouring farm, as his own cat had just died and he wouldn’t be getting another.

Oh, just one more rural thought, for those of you who’ve been following the stone marten story with bated breath. The smell in our bedroom was so appalling when we returned after my mother’s funeral, that we just knew that the beast had been very active whilst we were away. In fact we thought a whole family must have been enjoying our hospitality, as the attic was badly soiled as well. So John set to, cut another hole in the bedroom ceiling, scraped out the mess, disinfected, and, when the weather permitted, got out the ladders and blocked up all the accessible gaps under the eaves with bricks, chicken wire and cement, and … ordered a trap. We left the mess in the attic, to preserve the marten’s favourite scent, and when the trap arrived, John baited it with an egg and put it in the attic. The first night the egg vanished, but there was no occupant in the trap. After the second night, however, the trap contained a small hissing and shrieking furry animal. It would have looked quite sweet, were it not for the sharp teeth with which it snapped viciously at anything that approached. We didn’t think that any farmers or hen-keepers would be happy if we released it some distance away from us. And indeed Farmer Duhaut had no questions in mind about its fate when he turned up with his rifle. Despite my vegetarian upbringing, I could feel no regrets, as I set to with scraper, scrubbing brush and disinfectant to clean up its attic legacy. But that may not be the end of the story as our invader (variously christened “Fluffy”, “Cuddles” or “Cyril”) no doubt has siblings and parents out there somewhere.

Click on this link to download an Adobe Acrobat version which you can print out E2EYear6Weeks32-45.pdf

Winter here is a time for village hibernation, hospital operations, logging and muck-spreading. There has been very little snow this year, the sunny days have enticed us out on walks, but the dull grey days in between have just encouraged the withdrawn life of reading, computers, meals, TV and wood fires. So not much news!

However, today, 9th March, is an important day for the future of Entre-deux-Eaux. It is election day for the commune’s council and mayor. The last municipal election was six years ago, a couple of months before we moved here. So we decided to take our new democratic responsibilities seriously, for we can vote in municipal and European elections, though not cantonal and certainly not national ones (we’re not responsible for Sarko).

The election boards in most communes are plastered with the photos of rival party leaders, each of whom has a proposed list of candidates. However there is no such political rivalry in Entre-deux-Eaux. We just got a single hand-delivered letter in our post box inviting us to a meeting with the present mayor and council, all of whom (apart from one) are standing for re-election on a united front, whatever their personal politics. We received no rival communications, and later heard that no opposition had dared to present itself for election.

So on Wednesday night, when most good farmers are going to bed, we ventured out into the frosty night to hear the achievements, manifesto and debate. The turn-out was limited, and the mayor lamented the fact that new-comers hadn’t come to find out more about their decision-makers. He regarded his two Brits with some uncertainty initially (there are communes, after all, where the English have taken over the council and even the mayoral position and John did shout at him once when he was digging up trees on the edge of our land without explanation!). But in the end, when we had held our tongues and made no criticisms, he permitted himself to introduce us to the rest of the audience and even to promise that our road was on the programme for repairs this year.

The mayor, flanked by his faithful councillors (had Farmer Duhaut, one of his two deputies, had a neat haircut and shave for the occasion?) first outlined the virtues of the outgoing council. Firstly independence: Entre-deux-Eaux has remained fiercely independent, refusing to join with surrounding communes to form a canton or community of communes, in which Entre-deux-Eaux’s interests would be submerged and we’d be paying out for other communes’ ambitious follies. [Others might deduce that Entre-deux-Eaux has its head firmly buried in the sand and will never make progress!]. Secondly stability: Entre-deux-Eaux had been successfully steered for the last twenty five years, after the overthrow of the previous disastrous mayor, by many of the present council. [Could be seen as a lack of new ideas]. Thirdly prudence: local taxes had remained the lowest of all the surrounding communes [Some might say there is a corresponding lack of new facilities and some huge increases when imposed changes have to be implemented]. And finally it is a welcoming community. Most of his audience looked surprised when he mentioned the welcome extended to newcomers and the invitation to join in all the activities. “What activities?” asked a lady in the front row. “The club of the third age is very lively and there is always cake”, replied the mayor. As most of the incomers are young couples and families, this was not over-convincing.

After outlining the future programme of road repairs and obligatory sewerage the mayor asked, rather nervously if there were any questions. I’m not sure what you’d expect to be the big issues for Entre-deux-Eaux. But they turned out to be: Sewerage, Teenagers and Crosses.

Being a rural community, everyone is perfectly accustomed to having a fosse septique for their sewage, even if they don’t comply with recent regulations about having them emptied every four years by a qualified firm. So the idea of Europe imposing an expensive system of piping and centralised treatment is not popular. Entre-deux-Eaux’s 450 residents are insufficient to merit their own sewage treatment plant. And since the commune occupies two sides of a hill, its sewage would have to flow in two directions or involve expensive pumping. The nearest treatment facility on our side of the hill is in Saulcy-sur- Meurthe, which already has more than it can cope with (and Mandray also wants to use the facility). An earnest lecture then followed from the councillor who works at the Saulcy facility. Sadly there are incomers there who don’t like the fields round them being sprayed with treated sewage, and other disposal options are very expensive. It was suggested from the floor that if the mayor wants a well-attended meeting, the topic of sewerage would attract a large audience.

A man at the back started to raise an issue dear to his heart, whereupon a furious onslaught from the councillors’ table at the front was unleashed. It turned out that the man had been foolish enough to try and speak at a Council Meeting, and everyone knows that you can’t do that, – you are only allowed to observe the wisdom of the elders. So they had all decided that they would not listen to him at all as he was an extremely rude and abusive man. However, in perfectly reasonable tones, the man proceeded to say that if he didn’t speak up for the young people of the village, who would? All they wanted was some kind of facility (even a bus shelter to congregate in appeared to be an issue – it would attract the vandalising riff-raff of other communes).

When he had been shouted down on that issue, he, again in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice, mentioned the disappearing calvaires of Entre-deux-Eaux. Over the ages carved stone crosses have been erected at several road junctions in the village and the French language entry for Entre-deux-Eaux on Wikipedia mentions its Promenade des Calvaires (along with the 18th century church, the ruins of the mines and the characteristic architectural style with double doors for the hay-wains). We too had been saddened by the vanishing heritage. The cross at the bottom of our road was the first disappearance we registered. It was in fact a wooden one with a rather fine bronze sculpted figure of Jesus. John used his photo of a bicycle leaning against it for a long-ago Christmas card. But the commune employee dug it up when a large cistern (containing a pump providing water from Saint Leonard to the village) was installed, and for several years, on the pretext that the wood was rotting, he has been reluctant to replace the cross. Another calvaire has either disappeared beneath or been demolished by a large pile of gravel at a crossroads opposite the famous cherry tree. This was probably the cross to which the mayor referred when he answered that its re-installation was being delayed until it was decided whether to construct a roundabout on the site. Then recently we noticed the stone cross beyond Vozelle’s farm lying in sections on the ground, looking as if a large lorry or muck-spreader had toppled it. What pertinent questions the dissident was asking, we thought.

Another bit of local history then surfaced. The above-mentioned cherry tree. During the last war two unfortunate young resistance workers from Plainfaing had been hanged from the tree after they were captured by the Germans following an allied parachute drop of guns and equipment. Sadly the tree had been chopped down after Christmas. The mayor replied that he had notified Plainfaing’s mayor that it was rotten and unsafe, and it was they, as those responsible for the memorial and the tree, who had cut it down. (One of our two cherry trees blew down this winter, after becoming dead and rotten, so we understood the problem). However, he said, there were no plans to replace the tree. Our parsimonious council seems to have no feeling for history or landscape. Who would think that our mayor used to be a teacher!

Unlike Entre-deux-Eaux, Saint Dié has four rival lists of election candidates: The present ruling Socialists, the Right, the Left, and the Communists. So their mayor has to be out publicising himself at every opportunity. He draws attention, in the monthly newsletter to Saint Dié residents, to his vast program for reform, civic improvements and culture, and is photographed with his team in front of each road widening, new roundabout, local meeting and cultural event. So it was not surprising to see him at February’s AGM of the Saint Dié Walking Group. That might seem a non-political venue, but he shrewdly promised the group new headquarters, and it was a well attended meeting, thanks to the practise of offering champagne and holding a three-course lunch after the AGM. After the shambles of the Walking Group AGM a couple of years ago, it was a relief to see that the new committee seemed to have got affairs back onto an even keel. The meeting ran to time, the elections were undisputed, and concerns were noted and action promised. We also stood in a minute’s silence for a delightful nonagenarian Auguste who had died during the course of the year (apparently his coffin had been borne into the packed church with his walking poles and cap on top.) Proceedings were only disrupted when the ex-President arrived half way through and insisted on walking round shaking hands with people and talking very loudly to them!

The museum curator was more firm about electioneering when the Mayor of Saint Dié turned up to the opening of the water-colour exhibition at the museum. He said that the mayor was there as a fellow-artist and exhibitor, and so could not address the throng. However, the mayor networked efficiently after the speeches, and I was nearly presented to him, on the assumption that I was Nicola (who’d been invited to exhibit two paintings).

However, we didn’t see Saint Dié’s mayor at the annual Amnesty Book Fair yesterday. No doubt he had more pressing pre-occupations. Although he could well have set up a photo-opportunity earlier in the day. In the foreign language section we found plenty of English books to rummage through, to supplement our reading matter. John idly fingered an account of our queen’s coronation and a lavishly illustrated 1940s children’s book on Red Indians, and I bought some Arnold Bennett.

Mention of Nicola leads me on to doctors. For it was on her recommendation that we’d first gone to Dr T in Saint Dié (when I needed a repeat prescription). Nicola felt his heavy bookshelves, bound medical volumes, and enormous leather-topped desk were reassuring. And I found that he was perfectly OK at doling out repeat prescriptions, though his appointment system seemed a little old fashioned. You just turn up at the surgery waiting room, count the number of people already there, and calculate whether the doctor can fit you in before lunch, at a work-rate of 15 mins per patient. (Patient etiquette also requires that you simultaneously greet the entire waiting room, and later bid them farewell when your turn arrives). Each appointment costs 22 euro, payable across the leather-topped desk directly to the doctor. Home visits cost more, so locums have found that Dr T seemed quite happy to fit home visits in between patients’ hair appointments, instead of making them come into the surgery. I began to be aware that Dr T felt that it was uneconomic therefore for him to deal with two matters in one consultation. He even said that writing a repeat prescription and also filling in three boxes in an necessary official form were too much for one 15 minute appointment. I’d also found him completely unhelpful recently over the skin cancer, merely saying that having referred me to a dermatologist, it was no longer his concern.

John had never felt that Dr T was concerned with the whole patient, and had long since stopped going to him, although under the new health regulations, you are meant to declare your doctor. So when he wanted a flu injection this winter he decided to try the practice of the two doctors in the next village, Saulcy-sur-Meurthe. We were impressed, when we went through the door, to discover that the doctors shared a secretary and had an appointment system. Also small children were not expected to wait in silence on adult wooden chairs, but were provided with toys. So John booked in, and I accompanied him.

We were further impressed when the new doctor explained that they were a community based practice, limiting numbers so as to serve their community better, but as Entre-deux-Eaux has no doctor, he was prepared to accept John. Whereupon he took a full medical history, and decided to tackle John’s blood pressure, cholesterol and painful knees as a first priority in improving his general fitness and health. So John walked out with prescriptions for blood tests, X-rays and MRI scans – as well as having had his flu injection. We did observe that the appointments system was in fact no more efficient than Dr T’s, as the new doctor spends so much time on each patient that you always wait at least half an hour, even if the waiting room is empty! That first appointment lasted over an hour and the next wasn’t much shorter.
Following the knee scans, Dr P wrote John a prescription for the consultant of his choice. It is a bit difficult to choose when you don’t know the consultants. Though as Madame Laine was in pain from knee surgery at Saint Dié, and Madame Georgeon (further along our road) was about to have a knee operation in Epinal, there were some satisfaction ratings available. When pressed, Dr P recommended another Epinal surgeon.

We had an early morning appointment in Epinal. The surgeon decided not to operate as he thought that what John needed was more exercise to build up the muscles above his knees. So he recommended swimming, cycling and walking with air-cushioned shoes, and he wrote a prescription for twenty sessions of physiotherapy. So then John had to choose a physiotherapist. None of this waiting around for an appointment to be sent to you. You just make your own appointment with the person of your choice. A new practice has just opened between Saulcy and Sainte Marguerite, so John presented himself there, but so far he doesn’t seem too impressed with actions. And treatment has been halted during a debilitating cold. Meanwhile I have transferred my affections to Dr P as well – though have not managed to get my notes transferred from Dr T (fortunately, in France the patient gets copies of all tests and consultants’ reports and retains x-rays etc., so it is only the doctor’s own notes which need to be transferred – and from what we have seen Dr T’s notes seem rather skimpy).

I can’t remember if John used his dodgy knees as an excuse for not attending the Sainte Marguerite pensioners galette des rois in January. He certainly found it extremely boring in previous years. But then he’s not a great one for dancing! The festivities started with everyone sitting at tables sipping champagne in a decorous manner. But soon the dancing started, with much whirling and twirling and complicated steps (no one just shuffles uncomfortably). Then there was a slight pause for the eating of the almond-flavoured epiphany tart. Each galette contained a charm, and one lucky finder had to put on a gold cardboard crown and be “Queen” and dance with another who was “King”, which occasioned much hilarity. After more dancing, a chunk of brioche was served, and later still some coffee. By this time things were getting really animated, with whole tables performing a stand-up, sit-down, clap-hands routine, and the ever-popular line-dancing. With the pace getting too hot, the oldest Scrabble player and I beat a retreat at that point.

The next dance in Entre-deux-Eaux seems to be that of the Shooting Club. Ah yes, now there’s another welcoming new activity for newcomers to our village – shooting. I can’t imagine the dance being as much fun as the November Firemen’s Ball, though.

We can’t finish this, leaving you in suspense about the election results. So here they are: unsurprisingly, after 279 of the 392 potential voters exercised their rights, all the councillors in Entre-deux-Eaux have been re-elected without need for a further round of voting next Sunday (though Farmer Duhaut appears to have made a few enemies as he had fewer votes than the others). In Saint Dié, the Communists received insufficient votes (8.08%) to proceed to the next round, the Mayor’s party list are currently in the lead with 42.87% of the votes, while the right has 32.5%, but the second round could overturn that lead. Will the Mayor of Saint Dié survive? Watch this space.

A la prochaine!

Below, for those interested in the fine detail of the electoral system, John has produced a short guide, as French local elections are very different from those we have come to accept as the norm. Basically there are separate rules for communes with more than 3,500 electors and those with less than 3,500 (and for Lyon, Marseilles and Paris there are different rules again).

For those villages and small towns of under 3,500, every group/party has the right to produce a list of candidates, and voters can select candidates from one or more of those lists, crossing out those the voter doesn’t want – more a case of voting against than voting for. The votes for each candidate are counted separately. Candidates getting an absolute majority and the support of over a quarter of the registered electors are elected. If there are still places to fill a further election is held a week later and the top-scoring candidates are elected.

For communes with 3,500 or more inhabitants a two-ballot list system is used to elect councillors. Voters are given ballot papers with complete lists of candidates representing the different parties and have to vote for a single list; they cannot delete or add names or change the order of candidates on a list. If a list obtains the absolute majority in the first round, it is awarded a number of seats equal to half the seats to be filled. The other seats are distributed between all the lists by a system of the highest averages system of proportional representation. Otherwise a second round of elections is held the following Sunday. Only lists which have obtained 10% of the votes cast may go forward to the second round. The list which obtains the most votes is awarded a number of seats equal to half the seats to be filled. The other seats are distributed among all the lists by the highest averages system (Distribution “by the highest averages” means calculating for each list what would be the average of votes obtained per seat allocated if each one were hypothetically granted an extra seat. The list which obtains the highest average gets a seat. The operation is repeated as many times as there are still seats to be filled. Once the number of seats allocated to each list is known, the next step is to determine which candidates will get them. The general procedure is to follow the order in which they appear on the list).

The mayor is elected by the new council. To be elected mayor, a candidate must have obtained the absolute majority of votes cast in the first or second round. If after two rounds no candidate has obtained this, a third round of elections takes place and the candidate with the most votes is elected.

We were sent a voting card a few days before the election date. On presenting it at the polling station (the scrutineers were all retiring councillors on the list!) we were given a small blue envelope and told to pick up a copy of the list. In the booth there was no pen or pencil! The list is put in envelope and that goes into the ballot box unless you decide to abstain when an empty envelope goes into the box.

Click on this link to download an Adobe Acrobat version which you can print out E2EYear6Weeks22-31.pdf
You can click on the photos to see larger versions

This is a very special day in Entre-deux-Eaux’s year. If you had listened carefully a few minutes ago, amid the gusts of wind you may have heard the tinkle of sleigh bells. And you would have known that Saint Nicholas and his wicked assistant Père Fouettard have just entered our village hall where all the village children have assembled. At this very moment the good saint will be asking each child if they have been good all year. Then, amid chaos (for E2E’s Saint Nicholas lacks authority), he will listen to their fragments of songs and recitations, and distribute sweets.

He has reached Entre-deux-Eaux a week earlier than elsewhere. Perhaps this is because most of the same children will be rushing off to Saint Dié next weekend, at the proper time, to watch a very different and more dignified Saint Nicholas drive in splendour through the streets of Saint Dié, preceded by numerous floats, marching bands and twirling girls. Sweets will be thrown from the floats. Some years there are fireworks outside the cathedral, this year we are promised balloons. Then Saint Nicholas will disappear impressively through the cathedral doors until next year.

Unseasonally, the fields aren’t white with snow to greet Saint Nicholas today. But we have had snow. The first snow, way back in late October, took us by surprise. We were on our way to Basel airport to meet John’s sister Ann, her husband Derek and their elder son Steven (visiting for John’s birthday). The prettiest route starts off by going through the next village of Mandray, climbs 260 metres to the Col de Mandray, then bumps along a forest road to the spectacular viewpoint at the Col de Bagenelles. This latter section of road appears to snake round the contours in so gentle a fashion that you have no sensation of climbing a further 310 metres. And as we imperceptibly climbed we found that snow had fallen. The autumn leaves were still so pretty, glowing golden through the white powdering. Of course, snow at 1,000 metres should not be surprising towards the end of October, but many of us have fond memories of standing around outside the Blanche Neige restaurant in the sunshine (and in short sleeves) at John’s previous year’s big birthday. (And it has to be said that snow on the heights was not as unexpected as the cause of a diversion on our previous trip to the airport to pick up Ellen, namely frozen pigs on the road. That time we’d taken the main road which the lorries use. And one of these huge lorries had gone over the edge with its load of pork).

We often meander back from the airport through the wine villages (and their cafés). We misguidedly decided to bring Ann, Derek and Steven back along the route de Crêtes. For that first snow had reminded us that the mountain route would soon be closed to all except skiers and walkers. And it would be nice to sit and admire the wonderful views from a mountain-top café. It was a bit of a shock to find that the whole ridge was sheathed in dense white mist. Views were reduced to the few feet in front of the car. The ski tow cables were lying across the road, being overhauled. The cafés were all shut due to bad weather. Everything was clammy and miserable.

But then the next day we were in a different climate again. You may recall mention of Saint Alexis in a previous newsletter. The saint who ran away on his wedding day and lived the rest of his life anonymously under the staircase at his parents’ house? We’d always intended to return to eat at the Saint Alexis restaurant in the middle of the forest. Over a leisurely breakfast we decided to spend our visitors’ first day wine-tasting in Alsace, stopping en route at the Saint Alexis for lunch. “Traditional Alsacien food can be quite hearty!” we’d warned. But that didn’t sound a bad idea in preparation for wine tasting.

Given its remote forest setting, we were surprised how packed it was. But this was no posh restaurant. Many of the diners were wearing walking boots. There were dogs, rucksacks and walking poles under many tables. The waiters were swooping and dashing at high speed, but making time to stop and chat with the learning-disabled group next to us. We once went to a posh restaurant where there was a very expensive truffle on display at the reception desk, and you practically had to genuflect to it. The Saint Alexis was less aspirational: on their dark, polished bar there stood a large pointed cabbage. The crockery had pretty scenes of every-day life in Alsace, but sadly the rapid turnover of courses and plate juggling into the dishwasher had chipped it badly. First came the huge tureen of soup. It was delicious. The kind that gets added to day by day till it has an indescribably rich flavour. We couldn’t resist seconds, although we’d seen the heaped plates to follow. Some of us then had an intermediate course, to prepare us for the main course – either omelette, ham and crudités or sausage-meat pie and crudités. After that came the heavy stuff – choucroute for some, chicken casserole or smoked pork for others (not to mention the potatoes or pasta in case we were still hungry). We rounded off with a selection of fruit tarts.

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject of choucroute (which gets a periodic rather scathing mention in our newsletters), John read a recent newspaper item about the Great Hamster of Alsace. No, I don’t think it’s an early April fool. The beast is otherwise known as Cricetus cricetus and there are only 600 left in eastern France. Not surprisingly the cabbage farmers have long considered it a pest, as its favourite food is cabbage. Since many of the former cabbage fields are now being used to grow more lucrative maize, the Great Hamster of Alsace is dying out and the European Commission is threatening to fine France seventeen million euro for failing to protect an endangered species.

Anyway, back at the Saint Alexis, we’d had an excellent sweet local wine to accompany our (un-nibbled) choucroute, smoked pork etc. And despite coffee at the end, we felt that further wine-tasting (as originally planned) was not such a good idea after all. What we needed was a good walk. John (whose knees were painful) drove the car down to the Riquewihr, whilst the rest of us had a great walk downhill through the autumn leaves of the forest until we reached the vineyards around Riquewihr. Riquewihr was looking very pretty as we met up with John, and we strolled round the old streets, finishing in the small corner shop which expands inside to a subterranean palace of Christmas decorations: frosted baubles, stars, cribs, advent calendars, musical boxes, nutcracker figures, bears and candies.

By the end of October all the flea markets were well and truly finished. We hadn’t had many exciting finds this year. (In fact I think our visitors did better! Ellen was delighted to find a string of bright yellow wind-up metallic ducks and a green hand embroidered night-dress case at Saint Dié’s big flea market, whilst Leila found a beautiful vase for her new house and a green-stemmed Alsace wine glass to complete a set she already had). However, other markets take their place in winter – usually food-related ones. And so Ann, Derek and Steven got dragged off to the annual smoked pork fair at Plainfaing. We had fun there as there were also clothes, rabbits, second hand stalls, a marching band, twirling girls and copious advice from other customers about which cheeses and ham to purchase. In preparation for consuming our purchases we took a pleasant hill-top stroll on our way back and picked juniper berries (despite prickled fingers). The previous day we’d been to a big rabbit show and competition. Normally they exhibit farmyard birds as well, but recent scares over avian flu had curbed initial enthusiasm for that, so there were only a few last minute birds entered.

John’s birthday meal was at the Ducs de Lorraine in Epinal. We were delighted that the fastidious Madame was on leave that day, so the atmosphere was relaxed and we had a wonderful meal. By dessert, Derek could only manage a modest sounding fruit salad. To his amazement he got a ring of seven glass bowls each containing a different fruit in an appropriate liqueur. After that another walk was needed. John and I slipped into an exhibition of old Lorraine farmhouses. In the courtyard were some artistic metal cows. A few of them were lying waving their legs in the air. We felt we could easily join them!

But the autumn hasn’t been all about food. There have been a few cultural touches. On European Heritage Day, Ellen and I went to an interesting talk on the history of the Jews of Saint Dié. It was followed by a look at the museum’s Yvan Goll collection (poet, born Saint Dié 1891, wrote in both French and German). Then we visited the synagogue which is normally shut-up as there are now insufficient Jewish men for any sacred rituals to be performed there. Outside the synagogue is the memorial to the Jews of Saint Dié who were all rounded up and deported to the camps. Sadly anti-semitism can be seen in all epochs: we next looked at two of the cathedral’s mediaeval windows (removed and preserved during times of war and the dynamiting of the cathedral) which show Jews vilified as sorcerers and murderers of babies. Our tour finished (appropriately) in the Jewish section of the cemetery.

The following week the Romanians were in town. The theme of the International Geography Festival was dwindling energy resources, which set a gloomy tone. However, the invited guest country, Romania was a popular choice. Their café scored a hit serving Vosgian-type specialities of spicy sausages, cabbage, wine and coffee, and their four roving brass bands had little girls and their mamas dancing on street corners whilst little boys looked enviously at the instruments and their papas circled taking photos and recording on their mobile phones. The local history society’s lectures followed the themes. So I heard talks ranging from the impact of hydraulic power on the Meurthe Valley to vampires (a tribute to Romania). An eminent Benedictine monk at the nearby Abbey of Senones, Don Calmet, had in the Age of Enlightenment, written about vampires in his treatise on angels and demons, but had concluded there was no evidence for their existence (and they weren’t in the Bible). Meanwhile (back to food), John was learning how do interesting things with pineapples and snails (separate dishes, I’m glad to say).

We also spent a fascinating morning while Ann, Derek and Steven were with us when we were offered our own special tour of Fort Kléber. I had come across mentions of a Fort Bismark, outside Strasbourg, as a dismal transit camp for allied prisoners of war. Fort Bismark had been built by the Germans between 1872 and 1875 (after they’d annexed Alsace) as part of a circle of forts round Strasbourg (to deter the French from taking it back again). Much of the manual work was done by Italians, infiltrated by French spies. The spies reported it was so strong that the French army never did attack it. However, after Alsace was returned to France at the end of the first world war, the French army acquired the fort, used it as a garrison and store and re-christened it Fort Kléber after one of its own heroes. Of course it changed hands again during the Second World War, when it was used for the aforementioned POWs (who found it very cold and insanitary). We were fortunate to see parts most visitors don’t see: the brick-lined counter-saps dug under the surrounding fields to listen out for possible saps (tunnels) being dug by the French in order to set explosives beneath the fort’s walls. The gunpowder room and its ventilation was fascinating too (when the fort was built they were still using cannons). And then there was the section where the POWs were probably held and the dry moat where they would have exercised.

It is now a week since I started writing this. So Saint Nicholas has visited most other villages and towns, the Christmas markets are in full swing, and Leila is visiting. After we’d collected her from Baden-Baden airport (off a flight that cost her one pence plus a few taxes) we spent time in Strasbourg. IKEA was good for breakfast and some Christmas shopping (try and visualise an IKEA car-park on a Saturday morning that is only half-full and queues of two or three at the tills!) Then we wandered round the quainter street markets in the old part of town (much more crowded with tourists as it was the first weekend of the Christmas market!). The largest market is under the soaring sculpture of the great west door of the cathedral, one is by the canal and others are in various squares.

And the next day we drove over the Col de la Schlucht to a small village near Munster. Breitenbach-Haut-Rhin must be unique in holding its Christmas Market in the cellars of an old brewery (the rest of the brewery was destroyed during the First World War). As you enter, there is a crèche vivante between the wrought ironsmiths and honey makers (though at lunch time, only the sheep, a cow and a rather sad donkey were still in the stable). You follow the subterranean tunnels which are lined with colourful stalls of pottery, cheese, wooden boxes, sausages, embroidered hangings, candles, patisseries, jewellery, bird-feeders and Christmas decorations. Up some steps is a display of carved nativity scenes from around the world (with a lovely Peruvian one set on a boat). And then the tunnels lead into a large refectory, with a blazing fire in the centre and meals being served. After lunch Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus were going to return to the crèche to take part in carols. As we drove back, a rainbow arched from the white mountains and fell into the valley on the village roofs just in front of us. It felt as if we would drive right through its shiny colours.

With that seasonal scene, we wish you all a very happy Christmas and all the very best in 2008. Perhaps we’ll see you in Entre-deux-Eaux next year?

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We woke this Sunday morning (not very early, it has to be admitted, but that was the fault of the previous night’s Haut Meix celebration, of which more later) to primitive sounds from the hills. Unleashed from a summer of indolence and domesticity, the men of the Vosges were shouting and yelling excitedly. The hunting season had opened. It’s hard to imagine they caught anything on the first day. All that noise would have warned off any boar or roebuck, despite the fact that during summer the latter had happily come down from the forests into our open fields. During our six week absence (in England and on Andros) over July and August, one of our young pear trees had been destroyed by deer scraping its bark, eating many branches, and leaving just a single leaf. Then, shortly after our return, John opened the shutters one morning and saw a magnificent antlered beast in the orchard.

But then this summer hasn’t been normal. The wet weather meant that lower-lying village fields which could not be cut in May and June’s rain had become water-logged during July and August’s rain, so still couldn’t be cut. So by the end of August when we returned, the fields were tall with mouldering grass. Farmer Duhaut’s cows couldn’t graze in the uncut fields, so were confined to the upper fields to the north of our house. It’s been entertaining to watch them walking daily up and down our road as they did when we first came. There’s a slope down from the upper fields to the road. Any cows hesitating at the top when returning to the milking-shed in the evening, get roughly pushed off the edge by their unsympathetic companions jostling behind. Yesterday there was great consternation and bellowing when two cows escaped in search of more succulent grass and had to be driven back and fences repaired. Fortunately there were a couple of good sunny weeks in early September for hay making, grape harvesting – and also for the patchwork festival.

The world of fashion seems very remote from these bucolic scenes. But three quarters of an hour’s drive away in the Val d’Argent the patchwork enthusiasts of Europe were gathering for their annual colourful event. Fired by descriptions of earlier exhibitions, our friend Ellen flew over from London in early September for the festival. We started our two day orgy of colour in the small village of Ste-Croix-aux-Mines, where the cat-walk had been set up. It was fun watching the elegant models flouncing and gliding in their rich flaring fabrics – felt, velvet, satin and chiffon. The red and black Russian doll sequence was stunning. But it was even more fun observing the audience. Across the catwalk in the front row opposite us perched some surprisingly chic women appraising and surveying. Were they fashion editors? They looked very Parisian. The more ordinary faces of the more ordinary patchworkers (beige cardigan brigade) were lit up with wonder – almost ecstasy. Were they imagining themselves, transformed by these fabulous creations, going Cinderella-like, along with their Parisian sisters, to the Ball?

When the music and applause faded, the audience drifted round the designer garments. The stall holders were in their element as the Parisians descended and tried on extraordinary hats at rakish angles. Their creators pinched and cajoled their felt and net concoctions into ever more fetching shapes, reflecting back-of-head images in an array of hand-held mirrors. Ochres, rusts and blacks succeeded each other, perched seductively on the impeccably dyed hairstyles. Finally cheques for huge amounts were signed with a flourish.

Meanwhile, in the nearby Villa Burrus, where one of the main tobacco manufacturers had once lived, the ground floor salons were devoted to delicate Japanese silk and ribbon embroideries of ephemeral cherry blossoms, seascapes and starry skies. In the grounds of the villa, a patchwork flower garden is being developed, and more excitingly, beyond the gloriette (a cross between a band-stand and summer-house) an ornamental vegetable patch with swirls of colour, texture and scent from its tall red flowered beans, squat purple cabbages, golden nasturtiums, sage, thyme, carrot fronds. Perhaps we should redesign our potager.

There were plenty of conventional patchwork quilts and hangings to see in the big churches and the theatre, including Amish and Mennonite quilts. But it was interesting to turn from the traditional tulip patchwork pattern to the appliqué lotus. For in one of the churches were the Egyptian tent-makers, who traditionally embellish the huge tents used for weddings and other family and festive gatherings (though I think that what we saw were being made for the Cairo tourist shops). Cross-legged on the carpet in front of the altar sat Mohammed (according to his name badge) whose high-speed hand stitching and shaping of boldly coloured fabric into ornate appliquéd scrolls and whorls was producing gasps of admiration.

Between churches we refreshed ourselves at pavement cafés amongst the throngs of patchworkers. The next day we also enjoyed, this time with John, a more leisurely meal at the Blanche Neige. We were relieved that they’d recovered from their flood. As we remarked to Ellen, you don’t think of buildings on top of mountains getting flooded, but the evening before our previous visit a reservoir wall above the restaurant had broken and the staff had spent the night baling out and were looking exhausted as they served impeccable food. This time, after our meal, we were able to drive down the mountain roads unhindered by cascading water, to the vineyards below, where families were harvesting the early grapes. In the quaint walled wine villages like Riquewihr, less quaint green and yellow plastic tubs of grapes were being decanted and hosed out and children were selling bags of grapes for a euro. In dark cellars round courtyards this year’s winemaking was now under way.

Continuing on the restaurant theme, when Leila returned with us at the end of August for a week’s sun and rest (before the excitement of moving into her new house in Sherwood), she chose the Frankenbourg for her farewell meal. As well as the superb cooking there, we always enjoy the warm welcome that Madame extends to all her guests. By contrast, when we returned to the Michelin-starred Ducs de Lorraine in Epinal the remembered glories of their cheese board and dessert trolley were overshadowed by an officious Madame who kept correcting the position of our cutlery and plates; she also allowed valued clients to smoke over our allegedly non-smoking table and pulled a disbelieving face when Dorinda asked for decaffeinated cappuccino, there being no method known to her of producing such a bizarre drink (although her junior staff had managed it without any problem on our earlier visit).

On one of our Strasbourg visits (yes thank-you, all is well with my arm and I’m signed off now) we went back to a Chinese restaurant we’d enjoyed. It seemed a good recommendation when we noticed forty Chinese tourists coming out of the upstairs room. In search of new restaurants on another hospital trip, we tried Porcus Dei, the tiny pork-in-all-its-forms restaurant above an elegant charcuterie. As well as good pork, they had some stylish marquetry pictures on the walls by Spindler (apparently there is even a Spindler room at Betty’s in Harrogate). And one day Roger introduced us to one of his favourites, Les Trois Poissons on the canal quay in Colmar. Old photographs outside the loo show quaint old fishermen’s cottages and flat bottomed boats. On our way back from there we stopped at the ugly enormous black glass show-room of a wine producer. We’d previously ignored Wolfberger’s showy wine emporium, but had to admit, as we stocked up with Alsace wines for John’s sister, that it was more interesting than it looked, with friendly staff offering advice and letting us taste as many wines as we wanted in a modern atmosphere.

Returning one day after a totally unmemorable lunch at the clumsily named Hotel Restaurant du Commerce et de L’ Europe in Grandvillers (on the way to Epinal), we decided to follow signs to the American memorial on the outskirts of Bruyères. Passing some giant colourful ant sculptures on the hillside we began to wonder how much we’d drunk over lunch until we realised they were part of an educational ant walk, and nothing to do with the Americans. A few miles further, in a peaceful forest glade, stood a monument to the 100/442 regiment, who had played such a big part in liberating Bruyères and in rescuing the “Lost Battalion”. Significantly the 442^nd was composed entirely of volunteers from Hawaii and from the American internment camps for Americans of Japanese descent who, the monument records, “reaffirmed an historic truth here that loyalty to one’s country is not modified by racial origin. These Americans, whose ancestors were Japanese, on October 30th 1944 during the battle of Bruyères broke the backbone of the German defences and rescued the 141^st Infantry Battalion which had been surrounded by the enemy for four days”. Their losses were huge. According to the town’s website, in liberating Bruyères the regiment lost 1200 out of 2500 fighting men. And in rescuing the 270 Texans of the Lost Battalion, 800 “Yankee Samurai” were sacrificed. One of the few survivors had sculpted a dramatic “Knot of Friendship” which the had veterans presented to the town fifty years after the battle.

Back to restaurants. The most recent we’ve been to, for an unexpected celebratory meal, was the Auberge du Haut Meix. We thought that we had said goodbye to Roger and Dorinda the previous night when John had cooked a farewell meal. They were returning to England after a holiday spent on fruitless house-hunting. (Their picturesque holiday home in Mandray had lost its quiet charm as excavators and cement mixers have been grinding away for the last year laboriously converting the adjacent farm-house into three apartments, with an incomplete earth terrace looming over their quiet garden). With no apparent end in sight, Roger and Dorinda were getting desperate, and over John’s salad, sweet-and-sour and stir-fry, and chocolate mousse and apple tart we had commiserated with their lack of success. Then, the next morning, after Magic the cat had been to the vet for his returning-to-England vaccinations, they went to look at a final house in nearby Anould. It was a bit smaller (with only two bedrooms) but it had a superb view, lovely garden and substantial outbuildings. On the spot, they put in an offer for it! So an extension of their stay and a celebration were called for. Most restaurants were already fully booked, for it was a Saturday night. But the Auberge du Haut Meix hasn’t been open very long, is off the beaten track, is only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and had a free table. It was very welcoming after driving through the darkness to arrive at this tiny pinpoint of light on the forested hillside above Taintrux, then walk though its stone-walled courtyard into a brightly lit dining room and be ushered to a huge wooden table. And, although the food wasn’t memorable, it was great to be celebrating a successful conclusion to the Great House Hunting Holiday.

Our own house seems to have remained free of dead birds and pine martens while we were away, thanks to the fine chicken wire John installed in the gaps between roof and wall. But we soon discovered that other local wildlife had decided to take up residence. On uncovering the compost heap, John saw what he thought were small white mushrooms growing on the top. On closer inspection they turned out to be grass snake eggs. Given my snake phobia, he kindly disposed of yet another protected species. Then, as I was getting a room ready for Ellen over in the farmhouse I noticed a few dozy hornet-like insects on the kitchen floor. “They might be bees”, I remarked hopefully to Ellen, so throughout her stay she continued to gently put them out of the kitchen window. Later John tracked the source down to a nest at the very top of the stove chimney. And they were definitely hornets. Rather than calling in the local firemen he decided to tackle them himself. Lighting a fire to make all of them even dozier didn’t work as the nest had almost blocked the flue and the kitchen just filled with smoke. So, wearing a bizarre assortment of semi-protective clothing (like his wood-working visor) John opened the outside trap, sprayed a lot of insect killer up the flue, rodded rapidly and vigorously (no brush) and managed to make a vent hole without too much descending on him, apart from nest fragments, larvae and just a few hornets. Fortunately most of the live ones flew out of the chimney top. After more spraying, John replaced the trap cover and lit a fire in the range which smoked copiously and then roared. The hornets kept trying to return to the nest under the chimney cowl but finally either sacrificed themselves or gave up with the heat. And the next day he was able to complete the sweeping (with brush). Let’s hope they don’t come back. It might be wise to light occasional fire just in case.

As the rain has now set in again, we’ll soon need those fires. It feels as if Entre-deux-Eaux’s brief summer is over. The fields are cut and baled at last, the tables in our barn are covered with a bumper crop of walnuts and hazelnuts, the jars of blackcurrant, worcesterberry, and gooseberry jam are stacked up, and the Sunday vide-greniers will soon come to an end. But we still have the Geography Festival (sorry, I should have prefaced that with “International”) in St Dié to look forward to, we can re-join the Ste Marguerite pensioners at Gym and Scrabble (Helen) and on fortnightly forest walks (both of us have already had our boots on) and the winter lecture season will soon start. Will this turn out to be a mild winter like last year or one of the minus eighteen degrees winters? A bientôt!

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While Sarko and Sego were busy fighting it out for the hearts, souls and votes of the French nation, one of the local history groups had an earlier battle in mind, that of Frapelle in 1918. Some of you encountered Frapelle during John’s birthday festivities as the Sainte Claire walk and quiz started and finished there and one of the questions asked what vestiges of World War 1 you could spot. (The answer was: farmhouse ruins, trenches, shell holes). The local historians’ April lecture intriguingly included Americans and chemical warfare as well as Frapelle in its title.

It is hard to recall an era in which our American friends were innocent about chemical warfare. But the lecturer revealed that all that the American 5^th Division, the Red Diamond, knew about chemical warfare after their training in Texas came from a six day course on gas for officers, followed by a 40 minute lecture to their troops. So they came to the Vosges, Anould sector, to learn the practicalities of attack and decontamination alongside the hardened and exhausted French troops. After that, their first solo engagement was at Frapelle. The lecturer’s assessment (French) was that they gained a little ground, but the villages were destroyed. The official history (American) of the 5^th Division claims, more grandly, that it was “the diamond that cut into the battle line of the Vosges in August, 1918, and by the capture of the village of Frapelle made the only indentation suffered by the Germans in their southern sectors in three years of trench warfare.” The main gas casualties were not in Frapelle itself but in the deep ravines of no-man’s land, which formed the only communication lines and where the mustard gas lingered.

The day after the lecture, we got caught up in the presidential battle. It was a gloriously sunny Sunday and everyone was hyped up by the debate and heading down to the local marie to register their vote in the first round of the presidential election. So villages which had chosen that day for their village flea market had a traffic control problem. The first village we went to was a small picturesque Lorraine village perched on a hilltop. The cars bearing the elderly voters had to be allowed up the hill to the door of the marie, and the main square kept clear for their parking. So the stalls were in the small side-streets, and the tourists parked under the elegant row of horse chestnuts at the foot of the hill and strolled up admiring the steep colourful gardens. At the end of the day it was announced that both Sarko and Sego were through to the next round, despite Entre-deux-Eaux marginally preferring Sarkozy and Le Pen and Mandray’s favourite being Le Pen, followed by Sarkozy. Interestingly, our flea-market hill-top village had gone, more liberally, for Sarkozy and Bayrou.

The following Sunday was the day of the Gérardmer Daffodil Festival. Unfortunately, due to the mild winter and an early heat-wave, the daffodils had flowered in the high pastures around Gérardmer well before their usual date. The floats would be struggling to cover themselves in golden blooms. So we ignored the festival and went off to the annual lard fair and flea market at St Rémy, which is more picturesque than it sounds. We did very well on purchases there, and John was also much taken by a group of cows recumbent in front of beehives, looking smugly like honey-makers. Driving home beneath lowering skies, our car radio, broadcasting from the Gérardmer Festival, announced that in the event of transmission being disrupted by the approaching storm, music would be played. The heavens opened just as we reached home. The Gérardmer procession, low on daffodils, must have been a battered and bedraggled affair.

By the time Leila came to stay in May, we were doing well on our flea-market purchases. John’s prize purchase so far had been a silver-plated device for sweeping the crumbs off table cloths between courses (a major preoccupation in some restaurants, which had fascinated Viv on a visit). So when he spotted a slightly mangy crumb-sweeper in a cardboard box of oddments in a picturesque market beneath the shady churchyard trees he couldn’t resist bargaining for it on Viv’s behalf. With Leila we set off confidently for two flea markets in the plains of Alsace. The Alsace markets are much larger than our Lorraine ones, attracting dealers from over the Rhine in Germany. The first one was no exception. It was huge and very hot. The stalls started just by the marie. And unfortunately it was also the day of the second round of presidential voting. The roads leading to the marie were packed with crawling, hooting cars containing frustrated voters trying to edge through the throngs of acquisitive visitors. By the second village, most people seemed to have voted already. In the food and beer tent one unsteady gentleman in a crumpled striped linen jacket was eyeing up and chatting up all the attractive young women. He’d clearly been celebrating his participation in the democratic process since early morning. It may have been the heat, or maybe the sheer size of the markets, but after a while all the stalls began to look the same, and we left, exhausted, with nothing. Later that evening Sarkozy’s victory was announced. I wonder if that occasioned further celebration by the crumple-jacketed man.

It was also while Leila was with us that I started to notice a stain on the ceiling over my side of our bed and heard strange noises. And before travelling back to Nottingham with Leila, I was complaining about an unpleasant smell in the bedroom. So John was on his own by the time the smell got overwhelming and he was forced to cut a square out of the ceiling. I won’t go into the intricacies of our roof slope and inaccessible cavities. Sufficient to say that he discovered that a large black bird had somehow got trapped in a cavity and died above our bed, decomposition being aided by the hot weather and maggots. From a safe distance I felt very sorry for John, and followed his progress in disinfecting, filling, plastering and painting over the hole. But by the time I got back, there was a fresh damp patch on the new paintwork and a different unpleasant smell. So the ceiling was carved open again and sizeable cat-like droppings discovered. After considerable research and consultation John decided that we had a resident stoat or marten. So we started to consider our own chemical warfare.

Stoats are a protected species here, unless in specific instances they have been labelled a public nuisance. The website advice was to check at the mairie. However, on the principle that one of the mayor’s deputies, being a farmer, might feel less constrained by the letter of the law, we consulted Farmer Duhaut when he was passing on his tractor. He offered, providing we didn’t tell anyone, especially not the mayor, to put poison in a couple of their hens’ eggs (to which stoats are very partial). We should place the eggs by the entry hole under the eaves, well out of reach of any other animal. He swore that the poison was so effective that the stoat would be dead within 4 metres. However, the prospect of a second inaccessible decaying body was not appealing. So John went hunting for old-fashioned mothballs containing naphthalene. It has to be said that the smell of Jeyes fluid (sprayed into the cavity and on the outside walls) and mothballs was very pleasant after that of urine, faeces and decay. It remains to be seen how long-term a deterrent it is. There was also a series of small earthquakes while I was away, but they caused less disruption or damage than the stoat.

Outside in the garden, life was proceeding more smoothly. John had finally purchased a sit-on mower, which arrived round about the time he also realised he was suffering from hay fever. Perhaps I shouldn’t have used the word “smoothly”, as it turned out to be very bumpy riding the bucking mower over our fields. He also got the rotavator working again, which was a great boon in preparing the vegetable patch this year. Nevertheless, everyone else had neat rows of seedlings sprouting in their potagers before I finished sowing ours. Given that we’re planning to be away (UK and a Greek island) during the key watering and harvesting time in July and August, we’ve concentrated on more winter vegetables like leeks, carrots, parsnip, beetroot, celeriac, chard, leaf beat, fennel, and Brussels sprouts with an exception for sweetcorn, salad and okra. Our futile chemical warfare against Colorado beetles last summer made potatoes an unattractive option for this year. I realised how much I dislike wildlife in the garden, rather than at a civilised distance from the house, when a mole began its earth-workings in the strawberry bed, a small tunnel opened up under the Brussels sprouts and a grass snake slithered out of the compost heap. Now why doesn’t the stoat eat all of them?

Meanwhile, back on the political front, the election of deputés for the National Assembly was hotting up. We had been a bit disconcerted to receive an invitation to meet the ambitious mayor of Saint-Dié, as he has no jurisdiction over the peasants of Entre-deux-Eaux. But then we realised that he was standing as our deputé. He was due in Mandray about 15 minutes before he was due in Entre-deux-Eaux, so was clearly on a whistle-stop campaign tour. At that speed he couldn’t be expecting direct speech with too many people at either venue. Anyway, as we gardened we were not aware of a either a mayoral cavalcade or a rush of cars heading to meet him that afternoon.

Was it sheer coincidence that the long-heralded TGV was due to make its first high-speed journey to Saint-Dié during the election campaign? Both the existing deputé and the hopeful mayor were of course claiming credit for the faster connections to Paris and the rest of the world. A weekend of processions, bands and dancing was planned for Saint-Dié. We couldn’t hear the band when we went into town at the advertised time. Maybe the wind had wafted away the strains. There turned out to be only four musicians in tropical safari kit strolling round rather half-heartedly in the drizzle with three girls in red with red balloons and leaflets. So uninterested was the general public, that no one was following the band and John had the greatest difficulty persuading one of the scarlet girls that he would indeed like a leaflet. The fares seem very high and the frequency much reduced from the original proposals.

You might think from our web-site photos that we have done nothing since our last newsletter but dine out. At the risk of confirming this impression (and with the accompanying plea that Roger and Dorinda lead us astray when they are here) I must just mention the our trip to the Ducs de Lorraine at Epinal. Epinal has never been one of our favourite towns. The administrative and shopping centre has been extensively rebuilt post-war, and our visits have largely taken us to modern museums and modern departmental administrative blocks. So it was a pleasure to park on the tree-lined river bank and walk through the ornamental railings towards an elegant mansion from the belle époque. We swept up the stone staircase and into a dark panelled hallway, off which opened a large airy room, with lemon coloured walls, long windows and dripping chandeliers. Its tables were crisp with linen cloths and bristling with cutlery and glasses. A traditional French restaurant, complete with waiters in waistcoats and striped trousers. Badly done, these stage-effects can be off-putting and snobbish, but there was a comfortable, relaxed atmosphere, and Roger and Dorinda were already ensconced outside under the awning of the more informal terrace. Our amuses bouches, starters and main course were beautifully prepared (though we were sorry not to get the flaming crème brulée amuse bouche which was presented with drama to a neighbouring table). For some time Roger had been lamenting the demise of the opulent cheese board, even in “good” but trendy restaurants. Therefore great was his joy when a laden cheese trolley appeared. But even that was eclipsed by the desert trolley; choice was not a problem as one could mix and match discreetly, a few cherries, melon, peaches, strawberries, white chocolate and nut gateau, peach tart, rhubarb tart, crème anglais … and then, unbeknown to us, some, like the skewers of fresh fruits and the tarte tatin, were whisked away to be grilled or reheated and garnished with fresh fruit and sorbet … so after cold and a hot desserts we needed a leisurely coffee in order to recover.

Before Roger and Dorinda left Mandray for their parallel lives in the UK, we had a sunny day of flea marketing together in small Lorraine villages. The highlights were Roger’s lengthy discussion with an amateur rabbit breeder in a village with a pretty Romanesque church; the old glass-making village with its restored water mill wheel, its fanfare of French horns by the old factory gates, and its glass-shop among the ruins of the old factory; a brief stop to photograph the Indian war graves in a tiny British military cemetery; and finally my purchase of a biscuit box in Housseras. Now I’m not the kind of person who feels that life is incomplete without a biscuit box, but somehow this wooden box just drew me to bargain for it, without knowing how I would use it. “A box in the barn for all your seeds?” suggested Dorinda.

This magical box is very basic plain orange-box type wood, about 13 x 9 x 10 inches (you can calculate for yourselves how many biscuits it would hold, choosing your preferred size of biscuit). On its lid is printed in dark brown ink an elaborate picture of a shop in Reims, complete with diamond paned windows, steep gabled roof, displays of biscuits and the words Biscuits Ch Tarpin, massepains, pain d’épices, médaille d’or l’exposition universelle 1900. The lid also has a hand-written label showing it being sent via Saint-Dié railway station to a gentleman who lived on the same Saint-Dié street as our doctor, where the houses are prosperous neo-Renaissance and Art nouveau villas. Cobwebs and ingrained dust cleaned off, the biscuit box now resides in our bathroom. It’s a good size for storing those bulky packets of spare toilet rolls and bars of soap (should you ever need to find them).

Our purchases from the Entre-deux-Eaux flea market the following week were even more successful. Although it was the day for the second round in the elections for National Assembly deputés, there was no traffic problem here, apart from one sign which was at an odd angle and appeared to point down our road. While voting was at the mairie in the centre of the village, the firemen had the flea market parking efficiently organised opposite the football pitch a couple of kilometres away on the outskirts of the commune. As the morning temperatures turned from hot to blazingly hot, we looked at quite a few things, but didn’t buy. After a coffee back home we drove over to the tiny village of Fremifontaine where John bought an old Ultrafex camera to add to his collection and we had this year’s best chips served in copious quantities. In the late afternoon, as I watched Federer and Nadal battle it out in the finals of the French Open, John returned to the football pitch and got two further old cameras and a cast iron Le Creuset “thing” which has become the object of correspondence and speculation. Someone sent mouth-watering pictures of food being cooked on a Korean reverse wok and finally Le Creuset confirmed that it was a chaudière and promised a recipe book.

The next day it was apparent that Entre-deux Eaux was almost persuaded by the eloquence of the mayor of Saint-Dié. 49.75% of our voters supported him (101 votes) against 50.25% of votes for the existing deputé (102 votes) (there were 175 abstentions/blank votes!). Across the district, the existing candidate won by 54.99%, a slightly larger majority.

And finally, a soothing photo of a charming and cool café, L’Epicerie, in Strasbourg where we sank down for a welcome drink at the end of a sweltering day a couple of days ago. We have had several trips recently to Strasbourg, after I had a malignant melanoma on my arm removed, followed by tests and surgery to remove further tissue and to do a skin graft. It was interesting to explore the old hospital quarter afterwards as well as the more touristy streets. And this café was the treat at the end! The storm clouds gathered as we drove back towards the Vosges, and the thunder has been grumbling and the rain falling ever since. That should encourage the vegetable seedlings to grow as big as those of everyone else!

I couldn’t resist a post-script: This morning we were wandering round the hospital quarter of Strasbourg yet again, admiring the old buildings, like the Pavillon Leriche with its verandas, on which you could imagine the wounded heroes of World War 1 patiently lying in the sunshine. In places you could still see fading lettering in German. Being a Saturday it was pretty deserted. Then we came to an elegant gabled eighteenth century building from the cellars of which a man was carrying cartons of wine. Intrigued, we went down the steps to the heart of the hospital’s wealth. For these cool vaulted cellars date from 1395, from the days when people would often pay their hospice bills by giving tracts of land (usually vineyards), or on their death bequeath land. One of the long rows of antique oak barrels even contains wine from1472, a legendary vintage, which is still maturing! John was allowed a sniff and said it smelt very sweet, almost like sherry! At the far end is a door through which the bodies from executions were secretly brought in to the dissecting rooms. When the original hospice burned down the cellars remained intact. The wines of many renowned Alsace growers are now sold from there under a special label with 1395 Cave historique Hospices Strasbourg above the type, year and producer. The first bottles we saw were from Bruno Hertz, in whose Eguisheim cellars we tasted our first Gewürztraminer thirty years ago. This self-effacing man is now president of the group! Some of the profits purchase hospital equipment like a colour ultrasound machine for the maternity unit. So if you fancy a wine with a difference, place your orders now – but the 1472 is not yet available! Doesn’t it just give depth of meaning to the toast Santé!

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It being Easter, I feel we should start with a rather strange tale of moral virtue. Today, Easter Monday, we stopped the car in the middle of an unknown forest, to follow on foot a signpost which pointed down a dirt track to St Alexis. Woefully ignorant of my saints, I later looked him up. He lived in the 5^th century, ran away from his new wife on his wedding day, lived an abstemious life as a beggar and man of God for many years, including seventeen years living under the staircase at his parents’ palace (they no longer recognised him), praying and teaching the catechism to small children. Should you wish to identify him in church paintings, he is often depicted as a man holding a ladder or a man lying beneath a staircase.

We were on our way home from a flea market in Beblenheim, and trying a new route. On the map I’d noticed a little white forestry road which wound up the mountains behind Riquewihr and along it, in the middle of nowhere, a chapel of St Alexis. Hence our stop. As we got out, John remarked that the sign to St Alexis actually had in smaller letters underneath, the word restaurant.

So chapel or restaurant? We walked 300 metres down the dirt track, till the forest opened into a clearing with densely parked cars, a baroque chapel and a picturesque old farmhouse. There was also a strong smell of choucroute garnie, the popular Alsace pickled cabbage, smoked pork and sausage dish. The chapel of St Alexis was firmly closed, but from the terrace of the farmhouse came the happy buzz of conversation and the clinking of glasses and cutlery. It was a gloriously sunny day and the French were out celebrating Easter Monday in style. The tables outdoors were crammed with diners, and there were probably as many squeezed into various dark rooms inside. Set menus revolved around sturdy Alsace specialities of potage, choucroute, potatoes, ham omelettes, game, smoked ham and fruit tarts. It was a delightful scene to come across in the middle of a forest: a church and a popular ferme-auberge. Shame we didn’t get to see the baroque altar showing the death of St Alexis (apparently he died clutching a piece of paper revealing his true identity).

We’d had our first reminders of Easter a month earlier (just before I returned to Nottingham for a couple of weeks). Dorinda had often mentioned a favourite salon de thé in Villé with good hot chocolate and patisseries. Villé is not one of the quaint vineyard villages. It is situated on the old salt route from Lorraine to Alsace, and suffered the usual fate of Alsace villages (sacking by the alcoholic-sounding Armagnacs, pillaging, plague and famine) during the Middle Ages. The historic highlights of our stroll round the vestiges of the ramparts were the old abattoir and the prison.

The salon de thé was one of the larger and most prosperous-looking shops in the town. It was doing a steady trade in bread and chocolate Easter hares. Two very colourful ladies, in floating pink, gold, black and turquoise garments, were serving more slowly than we expected, until, close-up it was obvious that these ethereal creatures must be in their eighties. John nearly swept the crumbs and debris off our table, until he realised that the heap of broken egg shells were an artistic Easter decoration. There was also a leaflet explaining the origin of the secret recipe for their traditional biscuits, which had been handed down generations of master-bakers after a pilgrim en route to Compostella (via the salt route) had given it to them in grateful thanks for his rescue and shelter one night. One of the colourful ladies gave more orders to a youthful baker for replacements for the rather ugly, lumpy chocolate lambs and hares which had just been sold, then proceeded to tie scarlet bows round the necks of the next Easter victims. She explained that in Alsace the Easter eggs are not laid by hens but brought for the children by the Easter hare. She also revealed that their papa had bought the bakery (and the secret biscuit recipe?) back in the thirties.

A few minutes before mid-day, a steady flow of single elderly ladies and gentlemen passed our table and headed through a doorway for their Saturday lunch in the restaurant in the next room. It was a versatile place. Their elderly hostesses, now transformed into waitresses, must have been exhausted by the end of the day. We left (without a lumpy chocolate bunny) to try to find, further up the valley, traces of the old single track goods line which the Germans had installed during the first world war to supply their troops up on the mountain ridge which at that time formed the border between France and Germany. We parked where the old station must have stood, and walked between high banks which would once have been tunnel walls and followed the course of the old track for a kilometre. (We had just bought, at the annual Amnesty book fair in St Die, a couple of old walking magazines from the nineteen-eighties with an interesting article and diagrams concerning the tacot and the traces of the old line).

Having explored that section, we drove further along the old salt route to the intriguingly named Chapelle de la Jambe de fer. Below the tiny chapel the Germans had quarried and crushed stone for ballast and trenches and had made another railway station for loading and transporting the stones. Before the chapel was built in 1840, there had been for a century a statue of the virgin, which a grateful shepherd had placed in a pine tree after he miraculously found his lost sheep. Inhabitants from both sides of the Vosges used to come from far and wide for the annual Pentecost pilgrimages. They would come pushing handicapped people, and would leave behind walking sticks, crutches and wooden legs in gratitude for healing. The inhabitants of the nearest village even arranged for a harmonium to be dragged up the slopes by two oxen to accompany the worship and torchlight evening procession. But these scraps of information still don’t completely explain the Virgin’s strange name, Notre Dame de la Jambe de fer.

Shortly after our exploration of the Villé valley, we had another encounter with Easter egg-shells. Roger and Dorinda had returned for a few weeks to their house in the next village of Mandray, and we planned a few restaurant trips with them. Because, as you will have gathered, we like the Frankenbourg in La Vancelle, we have always ignored the Elisabeth further up the road. But we decided that the time had come to try it. We walked through their rather dark bar, and were surprised when it opened up into a light and airy restaurant at the back. I won’t go into details of the food, as John now gives a full account (with tantalising photos) on the website. Suffice it to mention that the chef (who has only been running the restaurant for two years, after retiring from business and retraining) had prepared a little something in egg shells with which to greet his customers as they perused their menus. We don’t know if it was the very undercooked egg or the slowly cooked salmon and haddock that upset John’s stomach for a few days afterwards.

We haven’t been back since. But while I was away, John, Roger and Dorinda returned to the Frankenbourg for a reassuringly good meal. As well as the restaurant photos, the event is also commemorated by a photo of Dorinda standing in Ste Marie aux Mines with a straw rabbit towering above her. Apparently they were looking for garden leaflets at the tourist office when they encountered this alarming Easter decoration.

Our latest restaurant trip was a farewell lunch with Roger and Dorinda at the Blanche Neige on Good Friday. Those of you who dined there on John’s birthday, can imagine us first sipping our aperitifs outside in the Easter sunshine. Once inside, we ate our way through the menu in a leisurely fashion. Then after the main course and to soften us up for the dessert, the egg shells arrived! However, unlike the Elizabeth’s under-cooked offering, these contained a delicious white chocolate mousse with a vivid orange mango coulis in the centre. The perfect Easter eggs. We had our coffees outside on the terrace. On the accompanying bonbons trays we found four endearing marzipan Easter bunnies.

We thought we’d seen the last of our Easter bunnies on Easter Sunday at Plainfang’s 35^th Foire aux lapins. This annual event always causes traffic to slow down on the main road from here to the Col de Bonhomme. So we approached it on the back roads. I had forgotten quite how may other things were to be found at the Rabbit Fair. We first encountered the mattress display. Then there were two attractive stalls of hand-woven baskets of all shapes and sizes to hold anything from logs to apples or baguettes. The longest stall held Vosgian bergamot boiled sweets (who buys them all?). A Disney roundabout outside the church would have drowned any music from within, while, to get to the lunch time meal of baekeoffe (a traditional Alsace meat stew) in the town hall, you had to skirt the crashing dodgems. We could also have bought children’s baseball caps, red plastic sexy underwear, or goats’ cheese. Finally, we came to the cages of rabbits looking for new owners. Presumably they weren’t for instant consumption but for breeding, as there were babies too. I thought the prettiest were the squirrel-red coloured ones. We were reminded of Nicola who would have wanted to rescue them all.

Finally, on Easter Monday, after gobbling up the last of John’s home-made hot cross buns, we set out for the vide grenier at Beblenheim in Alsace. This was not the first flea market of the year for John, as he had gone over to Mandray’s whilst I was away. (Mandray’s is held in the community centre almost opposite Roger and Dorinda’s house. As their front door opens straight onto the road, the cars jostling and queuing to park outside are a great nuisance to them. Entre deux Eaux, of course, is much better organised with a huge field to park on, under the efficient command of our firemen). Anyway,we have been to Beblenheim’s several times on Easter Mondays, notably with Wendy and John one year. It has a satisfying mix of dealers and inhabitants and the sun always shines. There was plenty to look at. I fancied an old advertisement for Moroccan dates. John fingered an Ultrafex camera. He has a small collection of these, which can now be seen on the website. His main criteria for collecting has been that they have to cost less than 4 euros and be in working condition. So he started to play with the camera. “I don’t know anything about cameras but it’s very old”, said the dealer hopefully, “probably from the forties”. “I think it’s about 1961” said John who’d made a study of their development, “you can see that they’re using plastic”. The price came down rapidly. Interestingly it still had a film inside. However, as it wasn’t in full working order and had a broken strap clip, it was rejected. No doubt its price went back up again.

We were approaching the last stalls and were still empty handed when we both spotted a little copper dish with three hares racing round its rim. It was green with age and had dollops of candle wax on it. We couldn’t read the inscription on the base. But we both liked it. “One euro” said the stall holder indifferently. When John cleaned it up at home the base of it read Exposition canine Luxeuil les Bains 16 juin 19?3. The missing digit could be 0 or 6. So what was the connection between the exhibited dogs and the depicted hares? Hopefully not hunting. John’s researches have found that the three hares chasing each other in an everlasting circle form a well known motif and there is even a Three Hares Project tracing their spread along the Silk Route from Ancient China to Devon. However the Project’s theories about fertility and the lunar cycle, not to mention the following quote, hardly provide a helpful link with a dog exhibition:
The theory of the Ancients that the hare was hermaphroditic and could procreate without a mate led to the belief that it could give birth to young without loss of virginity. In Christian contexts, the three hares may be associated with the Virgin Mary in her role in the redemption of mankind. This might explain why a three hares boss is often juxtaposed in western European churches with a boss of the Green Man, perhaps a representation of sinful humanity.

Anyway, putting theories aside, that was how we found the last of our Easter hares. Then on the way home we encountered our strange Easter saint (and meal) in the forest.

We hope you all enjoyed your Easter activities too!