Another disturbance to the prevailing hush of the village is the arrival of our wonderfully obliging Portuguese breadman from St Paul-de-Fenouillet. His deafening horn all over the village arouses every dog into a howling-mad frenzy of excitement – or is it panic?

The most welcome disturbance of all, in her smart yellow van from La Poste, is our young, dark-haired Catalan postlady Natalie, whose looks are to die for. More than that, she is an unpaid social worker who calls in on house-bound elderly folk every day. She surprised Clare recently by expressing concern over my health – because she hadn’t failed to notice that she was delivering to me weekly blood analyses from a Laboratory in Perpignan.

I can’t wait to be ill again! – because when I was at a low ebb she came over to the bench where I was sitting and gave me an affectionate peck on both cheeks.

Almost as welcome a disturbance as Natalie is the garlic seller who comes twice a year all the way from the Gers and pips rapidly and rhythmically on his horn during siesta time shouting “ail, ail, ail”. His huge fat heads of alium sativum, with cloves the size of pullets’ eggs, are worth disturbing one’s post-prandial slumber for.

Normally, that’s about it by way of disturbances to the prevailing hush. Even on our 8 mile cross-country circular walk in mid August we saw only 6 cars on a 2 mile beautiful stretch of main road (D9) above the Agly dam and reservoir, first commissioned in 1994. We were almost lotus eaters, refreshing ourselves along the way with plump juicy blackberries and two varieties of succulent figs.

Screaming match
In late July – after a village council meeting – the prevailing peace was shattered by the mother of all screaming matches outside the Mairie (next door to our house). We couldn’t see the protagonists, but my goodness we could hear them – some seven demented Pavarottis hurling abuse at each other, and vying for supremacy in decibels and pitch. Such clannish flareups occur from time to time in the very hot summers we have. I have an insufficiently tested theory that these rows increase as the temperature reaches blood heat. And we do live after all, on the same latitude as Corsica and its mafias!

The result of all this was that we now have no mayor and no Conseil Municipal (Village Council), even though all nine of them were re-elected without contest only 4 months earlier. They have resigned en bloc.

“Poisoning the village”
Ostensibly the quarrel is about the village’s tricky problem of water supply and management. We live in a drought-ridden area, and with the increase in younger families in the village, demand for water is always outstripping supply.

Rumours have sprung up – probably from one or two of the village clans which include the powerful hunting fraternity - that the mayor has been “trying to poison the village” by not declaring that our water supply is unsafe to drink. At that fateful meeting, this lobby outvoted by 5 to 4 the position of the mayor and his three supporters that the water was definitely safe. The mayor immediately resigned, as did everyone else.

On 29th August the Mayor (still highly regarded by many villagers, and legally obliged to hold the fort until new elections are held) posted an “Information à la Population” to the stout plane tree in the Place de la Fontaine, proving that our water is perfectly drinkable. Recent tests have satisfied the stringent demands of the DDASS (Direction Départementale des Affaires sanitaires et sociales) who state that “no restrictions are necessary”. The mayor concludes:
“to say the water is poisoned is not to understand the criteria, it is easier to tell lies and make people frightened.”

Watch this space!

© 2008 Basil Howitt

(expatica August 2008)

References:

•    L’Indépendant 30th July 2008.

Wild boar photo: Richard Bartz

Village photo: courtesy of Clare's archive