Blue Sky Living

Le flic

I discovered this week that the French police are among the most efficient forces in the world. Not only have they employed a former rally driver and armed him with a Subaru to chase criminals down nearby autoroutes at speeds of up to 300 km/h, they also found time to call me at 2am in the morning.

Now you would have thought that they would have been busy with something serious like murder or drug smuggling, but no.

So the phone went at 2am in the morning, which is a dreadful feeling because you think something awful has happened to someone close. I raced to the phone.

“Monsieur Ivey?”

“Yes”

“Are you the owner of a blue BMW?”

“Yes,”

“It’s been broken into and there is a light on inside. Can you go and turn it off.”

Now, not only did I not have the keys because the car is for sale outside the local garage, but even if I did I was far from inclined to traipse to the village to turn of an interior light. I explained all this.

“But Monsieur Ivey, the light is on and needs to be turned-off.”

If only I knew the French for jobs worth. Instead I lied and said I was on my way.

I told all this to the garagiste the following morning and he swore and shrugged. “C’est le flic.”

Loosely translated this means f****** pigs should have something better to do.

Still you can’t fault the service.

La Crise and Lourmarin

Instead of the credit crunch its La Crise here in France and I am beginning to wonder whether its affecting even the most exclusive of southern French villages. Take Lourmarin - one of the "plus beau village de France," a summer playground for loaded Parisians and red-kneed Brits. There are over 15 restaurants in the village and two luxury hotels all catering to a permanent population of just over 1,000 people. July and August is when the real money is made and the narrow lanes of Lourmarin are full of gift shops and art galleries.

Yet many of the shops are shutting, the rents are too high and people just aren't buying things. In the last year there have been the following closures: the village petrol station, the village supermarket, one estate agent and two gift shops . The significant thing is that no new businesses are moving in to replace those that are shut instead there are just to rent signs. I wouldn't call it a crisis yet, but this summer is going to be interesting.

More snow in Lourmarin

In the world league of dreadful drivers the French are well up there. Egyptians and Indians probably occupy the top two spaces followed by the Italians and then our Gallic friends. So what, you might wonder, would happen if several foot of unexpected snow fell on un-gritted roads.

Well, this week Provence has had so much snow that La Provence brought out a special supplement and I have had the misfortune of watching some of the worst driving I have ever seen. 4 by 4s are de rigeur in the Luberon, where if your house doesn’t have a pot holed drive several miles long you are snubbed in social circles.

So down came the snow, and the residents proudly switched their cars to four wheel drive. Unfortunately they then assumed that they could drive as they normally do, in fact I think some of them speeded up, under the mistaken assumption that this is what their cars were made for. Stylistically they continued their usual habits - one hand on the wheel, the other clasping a cigarette out the window, overtaking around a blind corner, pulling over in the middle of the road to chat to a mate-the snow changed absolutely nothing. Apart that is for their ability to pull off such nonchalance. The first morning of snow witnessed Range Rovers and Land Rovers cartwheeling towards roundabouts and waltzing gracefully over junctions. With the hush of the snow covered mountains it was all rather pretty, like a car ballet, except for the fact that tons of metal were involved. Fortunately nobody was hurt, and the locals caught on pretty quickly.

Gerard Isirdi exhibition

You are more likely to spot a Parisian in the Luberon in January than a traffic jam. Yet as I wandered to the bakery this morning I passed a tailback of 15 cars. The presse was shut, the bar was shut and there was a solitary customer in the Boulangerie and yet there was a bouchon (French name for traffic jam, the same as a cork, you have to love the romance of the language!) stretching throughout the whole village.

Baguette under my arm I investigated. The cause of the problem was the painter Gerard Isirdi. He’d spent the summer in St Tropez painting beach scenes and before Christmas we’d visited his exhibition complete with palm trees outside the door to the gallery. Cleary they didn’t like the cold. One of them was dangling from a crane in the middle of Lourmarin high street, swaying this way and that in the chilly mistral. Isirdi was clinging to the base trying to manoeuvre it onto the back of a truck. Meanwhile people began to hoot. I took a seat on the adjacent bench and watched, aware that nothing else of event was likely to happen in the village till the end of February. If I was a painter I would have got my easel out.

The Isirdi St Tropez exhibition continues till March. Pop in the paintings are great.

Weather news - it’s been confirmed that 2008 was one of the wettest years in Provence on record. Some regions such as the Pays D’Apt witnessed one and a half times the average yearly rainfall.