TOUJOURS LA BLAGUE

J. B. Kelly finds that

living in south-west France is anything but paradise

Marssac-sur-Tarn RURAL France, as everyone knows by now (and if they don't, they have not been paying proper attention to the works of the seigneur of Menerbes, Peter Mayle), was expressly created to serve as a combined pleasure-ground, outdoor stage and tuck- shop for the English middle classes. The French, with the practised eye to the loot to be derived from the enterprise, have thoughtfully provided the stage scenery (rustic stone cottages, blue-hazed hills, vineyards, deux-chevaux, memorable oub- liettes) as well as supporting players (ex- asperating but endearing artisans, phlegmatic peasants, sublime res- taurateurs, assorted yokels, churls, bump- kins and hayseeds, every one of whom is given to the impromptu spouting of pearls of earthy wisdom). In this setting the English bourgeoisie can act out its fantasies of the rustic but cultivated life, sans souci, except perhaps for the algae in the swim- ming pool, and oblivious to the larger concerns of the nation in which they dwell.

Is this, the sarcasm aside, a reasonably true portrayal of the English middle-class view of rural France? Or is life in the French countryside a little less enchanting than it is made to appear in the Mayle- order catalogues A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence?

Take first the French bureaucracy, an awesome host, millions strong, deeply imbued with the spirit of Robespierre and Saint-Just. You first encounter it on French soil as I did when I settled here two years ago — when you apply at your local mairie for a carte de sejour, or residence permit.

Ah, monsieur. You must produce your birth certificate, your wife's birth certifi- cate, your marriage certificate (you are, perhaps, divorce? A certificate de con- cubinage, then?), your children's birth certificates, photocopies of the first five pages in your passports, certificates of changement de residence, photographs (many photographs, one cannot be too careful), an attestation from your bank that you have a respectable income, an attestation from a notaire that you own a house in France, a further attestation that you have medical insurance, a timbre fiscale for FF120. C'est tout.

But we supplied all these items, with which we applied for residence visas.

Now, monsieur, you will supply them all over again . . . .

Nine months later our cartes de sejour arrived — valid for 12 months from the date of application. So it was back to the mairie a couple of months later to apply for a renewal.

Ah, monsieur. You will have to pro- duce . . . (see list above).

But we produced the lot last year.

Ah, that was last year, monsieur. This is this year, and you must provide new paper — and photographs!

A few months hence, no doubt, the same drollery will be enacted again.

To register your car may take, as it did with us, up to six months. To state it thus is to give no idea of the time, energy, frustration and money involved in the process, mostly due to the ignorance and obduracy of the local douanier who deman- ded the production of documents from HM Customs which, according to European Community regulations, are not required for the importation of private cars. When we came to pay the road tax for the year we learned that this is due every November. As it was now August, we expected to pay a portion of the annual fee for the three months to November. Not a bit of it: we had to pay the full rate for the vignette (tax disc).

But these matters are but trifles com- pared to the apparatus of torture awaiting you in the dungeons of the dreaded Arc, the French income tax authorities. How many seekers after the delights of Prove- nçal life know anything (or are told any- thing by the ardent publicists of those 'For heaven's sake keep still!' delights) about French tax rates and reg- ulations? Do they realise that one is liable for tax upon one's income world-wide, whether or not it is all remitted to France? Do they know that French tax inspectors can examine your bank account at will, without so much as informing you that they are doing so? What about the wealth tax, calculated on the basis of your assets world-wide and including your household possessions of value, books, paintings, objects d'art, your wife's jewellery, etc? It is not so much the tax itself that irritates as the compulsory revelation to the flinty eyes of the fisc (Robespierreans to a man) of the number, nature and value of your personal possessions.

But let us pass on to more agreeable and serious matters, in particular, the tuck. Ah, the rhapsodies that have been penned by epicurean Englishmen over the years about the splendours of French cuisine, the bliss to be experienced as one strolls through a provincial market, its stalls overflowing with goat's cheese, haricots verts, red peppers, brown eggs, tubs of lavender honey, fragrant bunches of basil, pink-streaked onions, live rabbits, peaches and so on (for complete lists, see the oeuvre of Peter Mayle, passim), not to mention the joy of discovering, purely by chance, a little gem of a restaurant tucked away in a tiny village nestling in a hidden valley (the cliches are coming thick and fast, I admit, but this is de rigueur when writing about Noddyland), where Tante Aubergine can whip up an unsurpassable seven-course repas at a moment's notice out of nothing more than a few old goat's feet, some dried peas, and a marinated soutien-gorge.

All this, not to put too fine a point on it, is so much blague. Provence, including the Luberon where Mr Mayle resides, has never developed the type of haute cuisine to be found, for example, in Burgundy or the Perigord. (Incidentally, the Luberon is not the remote and under-populated re- gion that impressionable readers of Mr Mayle's books might take it to be. On the contrary, it is very popular with the BCBG — bon chic, bon genre — crowd, French and English.) The reason why Provence, like the area where I live, which the locals ingenuously refer to as the pays de passion or pays de cocagne, never acquired a culinary reputation is that both were poor and populated by a depressed peasantry. While their poverty may have inspired them to improvise in the kitchen, they had little chance of attaining gastronomical heights with the raw materials at their disposal. It is much the same today. Cheese and fruit apart, the local produce is inferior to that to be found in England. Would Mr Mayle really prefer Provençal lamb to English, even baked with rose- mary? Or local beef to Scotch? As for French milk, its quality is so abysmal as to beggar belief, pays de cocagne or not.

One wonders, in fact, what these English expatriates ate back in England that they should swoon so now over Provencal (or Tarnaise) food. One wonders, too, what they do for a social life, buried down in la France profonde. There is a curious void at the centre of Peter Mayle's Provençal idyll, and this is the absence of any reference to the society of his French peers. The only French with whom he seems to have had any dealings are shopkeepers, artisans, peasants and restaurateurs. The French middle class does not appear in his pages. In one respect, this is only to be expected, as the French bourgeoisie is pretty thin on the ground in the remoter localities. Moreover, the few that are around are not exactly yearning to strike up an acquaint- ance with English interlopers. The clan- nishness of the French bourgeoisie, is, of course, notorious. But there is another factor at work, I have come to realise, and this is that the French and English middle classes don't really like each other. Each is ill at ease in the company of the other, and the uneasiness is not simply induced by a common inability to converse fluently in either language. Mr Mayle, I suspect, like most English expatriates, finds compan- ionship among his fellow countrymen.

So we have come full circle to the proposition with which we started — that the bulk of English expatriates do not integrate themselves in French society, but regard the country as a theme park de- signed for their entertainment, which is why, perhaps, they and the French bourgeoisie will never come to a modus vivendi, the latter, with some justification, resenting what they suspect the underlying English attitude to France to be. I found in Peter Mayle's books, as in others of the kind, an undertone of condescension to- wards the French at large, as well as towards the local people for whom he professes regard or affection. Like too many Englishmen who have settled in France — at least for a period — he has assumed proprietorial airs, which manifest themselves in several ways, not the least of which is a contempt for Parisians and others who holiday in the Luberon or acquire homes there. He, along with others who share this outlook, would do well to ask themselves occasionally whose country it is and who are the outsiders. It might also be salutary for them to recall at times that France has a history, a culture, and an existence of more significance than provin- cial cuisine. Over the past three years it has been experiencing a moral and political crisis of some magnitude, to the despair of thoughtful Frenchmen. Not a hint of this, however, ruffles the pages of Mr Mayle's careful confections. But then it wouldn't, would it? One must never forget that one is describing Noddyland.