What a January it has been in Poitou Charentes

Well—at last the sun is shining at that dreadful month of January is over!
 
I usually enjoy the start of a New Year. For the last 10 years I’ve had the same resolutions—improve my French, and lose weight! I suppose, living here in France, that my language skills must be improving. I regularly go to French classes—but I’m naturally a lazy person and should do more studying—and more talking with French neighbours to make real progress.

The weight is an on-going problem. I could write a book on the subject, but can’t seem to be able to stick with the ‘regime’. January is usually my best month and the diet is given a boost during Lent (last year I gave up booze—it was purgatory!)—but , from Easter onwards it’s back to the old ways—parties and picnics, so that by October I’m back to ‘square 1’ and thinking…’get Christmas over, and I’ll go on a diet in the New Year’!

The trouble is that I’ve not really got started this year. I blame the weather—I seem to have hibernated for most of the month—and it doesn’t help when your husband who is toiling away with the upstairs renovations feels he needs puddings—with custard—in order to keep going throughout the cold!
 
We did have a jolly evening down at the salle de fete in Asnois a couple of weeks ago.
 
Every year in January, to celebrate the feast of Epiphany there is a ‘Galette soiree’.

It should really be on January 6^th—we call it ‘Twelfth Night’ in England—and celebrate by taking down all the decorations.

 In France it is ‘le jour des Rois’ and celebrated with a special cake—La galette des Rois. These can be bought in any supermarche or boulangerie and consist of 2 layers of flaky pastry, filled in the middle with frangipane. A gold paper crown is included in the wrapping and inside the cake is a lucky ‘feve’. A feve is a broad bean—and the original token was meant to bring good luck to the recipient—who also got to wear the crown and be ‘king’ for the day! The feve was later replaced with a porcelain charm—usually a character from the Nativity—and these nowadays are collector’s items. Like everything, this has now been ‘dumbed down’ to a plastic Disney-style charm—loved by the children, but lacking the ‘treasure’ to be prized in the past.

We missed the soiree last year as we were snowed up, but this year the evening ‘fell’ between snowfalls so we headed off, taking our ( English) neighbours with us.

We’d told them of the event 2 years ago when we were showed home movies of life in the village of Asnois during the 60’s. That was an amazing evening—of the 150 odd inhabitants, at least a hundred, aged from 6 to 96 turned up to watch a film of life on one of the farms in Asnois, the wedding day of a couple from Vieille Metive and lastly—and quite bizarrely—the slaughter and butchering of animals for the freezer—which brought hoots and ribald comments from all and sundry! Not entertainment I could imagine seeing on a Saturday night in the UK!

Needless to say we’d spread the word of this unusual evening out—and so Keith and Ginnie decided they’d join us this year.

Sadly the entertainment was rather poor. They couldn’t get the projecter to work so the film wasn’t shown—Marie-Noelle insisted there was no slaughter this year—no doubt it will be sorted in time for next year’s do and then we’ll find out the subject.

This left us with poetry readings- yes—another reason to improve one’s French!- followed by galettes and cider and general chit-chat with the locals. I was introduced to a new neighbour at Peuroux—so we now know everybody in that hamlet and then a tall man came to speak with us –in English! He’d just moved to Asnois , coming from La Rochelle, and he’d learned his English in Plymouth ( sometime after the War) where he worked for the French Navy as a pilot on an aircraft carrier! A tad more glamorous than all the locals—who are nearly all farmers!
There appear to be no rules in France as to when the  Christmas decorations should be taken down! Going along a back lane in July you can still see  the odd Father Christmas trying to shin up a ladder with a sack on his back!

And it went down very well cold the next day!

 

About me

I am Heather Squires we bought our house in 2002, moved over to France to live here full time in 2006 and now run Maureville Chambre D'hotes in Asnois - 5 miles south of Charroux in the Vienne department.

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Posted by: heather squires on 02 February 2010