Operation Barney

It has been a busy week, and for one reason and another, I haven't been able to sit down and update this blog. However, the sun has just unexpectedly come out, after a week of drizzly, cold, grey and windy weather and the church bells are giving it their all, somewhat more than usual, probably because it is the Sunday before Easter which, from the depths of a long since and mostly forgotten religious education, I believe is a day of some significance - Palm Sunday, I think. Ah, you see, I'm not totally senile yet - the brain just about clunked around to the correct data cell in my head in time for me to put that in as I was typing this paragraph. That has cheered me up no end.

The church bells are a constant and mostly welcome part of my life down here. They ring the hour from seven in the morning until midnight and also each quarter hour with either one, two or three 'bing-bongs' respectively, and contrary to expectation, they are not at all intrusive or annoying. In fact, they are extremely reassuring. The deep sonorous tones of the hour bell mark the passing of time in a steady, calming and respectful manner. The warmth of the tone confirming that all is well and life goes on. I think I would miss them more if they weren't there. I certainly feel their loss when I return to London, where either bells are just not rung anymore or you can't hear them most of the time if they are.

On high days and feast days, like today, the bellringers are given the chance to really show what they can do and the resultant cacophony of noise at the beginning and end of the service is a joy, so much so, that if the windows aren't open, I will get up and open them to listen. I live between the two cathedrals in town - St Vincent and St Michel. St Vincent is the oldest and slightly nearer and has the loudest bells. There is a third cathedral in the Cite, Basilique St Nazaire, which makes this a wonderful place to visit if you like nosing around places of worship.

When I first arrived here I was amused by the fact that the hour appeared to be rung twice. At first I thought it was the two cathedrals competing with each other in some centuries old disagreement about when the hour had been reached - each refusing to back down, each using their own sundial on the church wall, each insisting theirs was correct, each refusing to use more modern techniques - "C'est deux heures maintenant", "Non, c'est maintenant". I was quite disappointed when I read that St Vincent deliberately rings the hour twice, two minutes apart, so that if you missed the first one you get a second chance. I then noticed a third ringing of the hour, usually between the other two but sometimes overlapping - this was St Michel's bells which are not as loud, slightly further away and fainter due to the usual prevailing wind direction here. The result of all this is that, although marking the passing of time, there is an element of relaxation in the exactness of the passing of the hour, which in this hectic, time precious world of ours, I also find quite reassuring and a little quaint. The time in Carcassonne, for example, at this very moment is two-ish o'clock.

Earlier I mentioned that the bells are mostly welcome. There is one set of bells in St Vincent that they ring for about an hour on a Sunday morning during the church service. I am sure that they are playing a tune. Many a time you think you recognise something only for a discordant note to throw you off the scent - and discordant is the problem. The pitch and tone is just at a level that is really grating and annoying on the ear and together with the half-grasped tunes makes for unpleasant listening. I usually put some music on to drown them out, not always successfully. I don't know anyone that finds them pleasant. My theory is that it is some sort of penance - if you can't get your arse down to church on a Sunday morning then you will be forced, God forgive us, to listen to this instead.

I said I had been busy this week and busy it has been. The building work has gone full circle - at one end of the first floor in the main apartment the finishing touches are being put to two bathrooms and a guest room and at the other end the separate apartment has been reduced from a habitable space to a wreck of rubble, broken wood and twisted pipes. "My God, what have you done" shrieked my wife when she saw a picture of the carnage. When 'the genius' cheerfully came to tell me that a wall had fallen over when he took a door frame out, I knew it was time to tell him to "Stop what you are doing, put the sledgehammer down and step away from the wall with your hands in the air" It's a good job I have total faith in his ability to rebuild.

The demolition destruction derby has bought another problem - how to get rid of all the rubble and rubbish and unwanted sanitary ware, as, once again, my cabriolet is not proving to be the ideal transport for the problem. However, there are quite large bins on most street corners in the bastide town and we had noticed that a large number of strange things appear to be dumped either in or next to them and that the local dustmen, who remarkably come three times a day, every day, do seem to take everything away. So 'Operation Barney (Rubble)" is underway. Each time we go out a bag goes with us and is deposited in a different bin on a different street corner. Little and often is the way. We have evoked the wartime POW spirit of The Great Escape where the dirt from the tunnel was dropped down trouser legs onto the vegetable patch. "We'll soon have it all gone, chaps, if we all pull together". I'm thinking of asking visitors to take a bag each when they leave.

The bath is going to prove a bit tricky but then I haven't had a dinner party for a while ...