Almost Cravantaise. . .

Just three weeks away from our move to France now. The idea that had been lurking in our heads for a while,  was then firmed up April 2013 and rolled out over the last twelve months, is almost a reality. Feels quite strange.

Think it was the photo of the house up on the estate agent's website last week that helped it all to sink in - along with all the paperwork. There's quite a bit of it. Very interesting, which is just as well, as there's no alternative but to do it. Some had to be put in place over here. Others we can't complete till we're over there, one of which is a paper in French and English. The French authorities have to stamp it first,  then they send that section along with the English section back to the UK for completion. As we're coming back for a week in June, maybe if they pull their finger out and get it done in time, we could bring it back to the UK for them. Save them the cost of a postage stamp - in these days of austerity and all that. 

We're now on the landlord register as we're letting our house out while we're away. We've also finally accumulated all the birth certificates and marriage certificates (across several generations!) that are needed for our residency cards. Mike was straightforward as he had most of this information already. But being adopted, I had to get a copy of my original birth certificate as well as my adoption certificate, because all my names are different from when I first arrived in the world. Then my adoptive parents birth certificates and their marriage certificate. It's practically a whole new filing cabinet and articulated lorry to get that pile across the channel. Anyway it's done.

The car received the full treatment yesterday, with a major service, tyre change etc., and all the headlights were replaced to meet French requirements. A legal necessity if your staying longer that three months I believe, or may be it's six. We've held on to the original British headlights, which we'll store so that when we come back, they can be put back. That was a painful bill.  Fortunately red wine bottle to hand from Fabrice Gasnier- the sounds of cork popping, wine poured into glass and then a taste, and Mike had fully recovered. The last thing to do on the car is when we get to France, where we must register the car for a French number plate.  But have all the paperwork now for that. Tax paperwork is all in the system. Phones, internet connections, postal redirection. There's loads of detail. Almost there, but not quite. Mike is downstairs working on the next batch.

'Reckless' the house elf

On a serious note, I've been having problems with the staff. I think the staff - otherwise known as 'Reckless the house elf' - has had a turn, or perhaps hasn't fully recovered from the cost of the car service. He's been behaving both badly and strangely. 

Yesterday afternoon I was making a batch of lavender ice cream, which I admit is particularly delicious. I turned away briefly from the freezer container in which I had just placed it and suddenly noticed movement. A long arm with spoon attached, was attacking the ice cream and had left a hole. The photo of the culprit was taken shortly afterwards and the expression on the face says it all. Then this morning, he emerges from just having a shower, holding an umbrella.  

Dear readers - do you think I should be concerned, or should I just open another bottle of wine?

Are you still proud to be British?

I've always felt uneasy with this collective noun approach.  Britishness is a complex and contentious subject and depends on who you're talking to.  What is it exactly? Put someone English, Irish, Welsh and Scots in the same room who know their histories and pose them the same question, then spice it up with tales of Empire and colonialism, some stories perhaps from say Bradford, the experiences of representatives from pressure groups for the socially excluded, and the perspectives would likely be different. A variable ideology.  Along with tolerance, language, landscape, creativity, inventiveness, self-depracation I'd of course have to include marmite. 

I was asked this question the other day over coffee with friends. A simple little question -  one that gets thrown at you from time to time, and which you try to answer within a two minute time-frame, to avoid appearing to 'hog the conversation'.  Clearly my subconscious didn't rate my reply. Because here I am wide awake at 5.30am with it leaping about it my brain. Sad case really.

There wasn't one thing in particular that triggered the question. May be it was something as simple as our imminent move to France for a few years. We'd actually been discussing the second world war's continuing ability to surprise. May be Britishness during war or that war in particular is easier to define. But in any case as Anthony Horowitz put it in a Telegraph interview about the return of Foyle's War, 'there were still stories to tell', which is why the production team jumped at the chance of some more episodes. 

Also  Shetland had been on tv just a few days previously. Based on Anne Cleeve's book - Red Bones  The Shetland Bus was ultimately at the heart of the mystery, which I knew nothing about but as the link reveals, was a vital and dangerous boat run with Norway. Then we moved on to  Peter May's Lewis Trilogy, Annie Proulx and Tony Hillerman, all of whom are authors for whom a wide-open landscape establishes a powerful influence on their storylines.  There's also been something on the BBC website in the last few days about Australian Nancy Wake, otherwise known as the white mouse, who led an escape ring and was a member of the Maquis against German occupation, and whose ashes have just been scattered in the village of Verneix. Last year while we were in France, we went to see an exhibition in Romorantin-Lanthenay, about an hour away from us, and walking around came across the town's war memorial. One one side were listed all the British agents with their code names, who had been working alongside the local resistance. Never seen that before, anywhere. 

Then this morning there was something on the Beeb about 'What Japanese History leaves out'. Mind you there is a difference between what is deliberately left out and what remains simply overlooked. I was never aware through school, despite History being a main subject for me, that it was the British who created concentration camps, during the Anglo-Boer war. It took marriage to Mike and meetings with his South African relatives for me to discover that painful episode. 

May be self-reflection should be added to my list. Good things. Bad things. There are so many aspects and conflicting values surrounding Britishness. All I know is that ultimately I can't see myself living anywhere else. If successive governments and the Commission of Racial Equality in various papers can't define it, sure as hell, neither can I.

I never knew that

A Theatre Dictionary was posted by a friend a few days ago, via Prosound. It's a poem that cleverly relates the contrasting terms and their meanings that the language of theatre incorporates.  Fortunately Mike and I spent some time working in the theatre, so it's been a laugh reading it.  But for anyone who's not used to working in that environment, it's probably totally confusing. However it served to remind me of a moment back in the late 60s.

I was living down in East Sussex and had been sent to a local drama school, in part to encourage me to speak 'proper'. I so enjoyed myself that it became my main interest as a teenager, and it was here that I met a poem called  The Sleeping Bag. I had to learn it for a voice exam - a fun poem to recite but quite tricky. The first few lines go like this:

On the outside grows the furside; on the inside grows the skinside.
So the furside is the outside and the skinside is the inside.
One side likes the skinside inside, and the furside on the outside.
Others like the skinside outside, and the furside on the inside. If you turn the skinside outside, thinking you will side with that side, then the soft side, furside's inside, which, some argue, is the wrong side. . .

There's more, but I've put a link to the poem below.

What no one ever explained and I clearly couldn't be bothered at the time to find out, is that this humorous poem was written by Herbert Ponting F.R.P.S. a professional photographer, who was expedition photographer and cinematographer for  Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to the Ross Sea and the South Pole (1910-1913). I literally only found this out a couple of days ago. Ponting captured some of the most enduring images of antartic exploration and is generally regarded as a pioneer of modern polar photography. Given his working environment the words become very powerful and poignant. The poem was included in the 1948 film  Scott of the Antartic, but perhaps was inspired by the sight of Scott's team wriggling laboriously into their sleeping bags, as depicted in Ponting's classic documentary The Great White Silence. Restored and shown by the British Film Institute in 2011, I've attached a review of the showing. It's clearly a masterpiece, which I'm now hoping my nearest and dearest might be encouraged to buy me for my birthday!!HINT!!! HINT!!!HINT!!!