The Hills are Alive...

Le Comte and I have spent the weekend bouncing around ideas for Coldspot-in-the-Spring with a musical-type Brit who is also trying to earn a living under the soviet-type regime that prevails here.
[At which point I feel compelled to add that le Comte and I have just learned via the World Service (so important to us ex-pats), that China is waiving taxes on start-up businesses for three whole years.
Result: regeneration of Chinese economy.
In France, on the other hand, everyone is taxed at an exorbitant rate from day 1 and then high social charges are applied on top.
Result: mass unemployment and economic stagnation.
I must recommend the World Service to Sarkozy, he would learn so much.]
Here at Chateau Coldspot we are surrounded by communists who no doubt approve of these policies of redistribution. Charbonville and its environs are the last real bastions of communism in France, possibly in the whole world. It is certainly more communist here than China. To the north of Coldspot, however, where the mountains start to grow seriously large and fog sits on their tops like fluffy hats, it is a different story. The locals guard their ancestral farmhouses and vote le Penn, National Front. These mountain people set out to vote before dawn and return for their typical Cevenol lunch of sweet chestnut soup, snails and the odd leg of mutton complete with wool and hoof. Life is hard in the mountains and they don’t waste much. In the old days they spoke Occitan (a bastardised form of Latin) and slept in boxes filled with straw, pulling the lids firmly over them at nights. The temperature in a typical stone farmhouse never exceeded 14°C. It was cold everywhere in those days, not just here.
Back in Charbonville, the gnarled ex-miners, many of them also ex-Maghreb, (Charbonville can sometimes feel like a suburb of Marrakesh) and their culturally confused descendants, saunter out to cast their votes just before sun-down and return for the evening couscous.
Between the suspicious, rural Cevenol types and the restless, anthem-singing unemployed, I often feel there is not much room in these parts for a natural Lib Dem like me.

So, we are going to try a musical weekend at Coldspot, in association (as they say) with somebody musical. It will be The Sound of Music (what else is there?). People will come for two days and sing and dance and finally perform with the encouragement and tuition of the Musical Somebody, who is actually slightly famous according to his CV. Le Comte may join them together with Princess 2. I will prepare lunch and clean up afterwards. Princess 1 might make buns to sell. She hasn’t decided yet. It could be good, the Musical Somebody is enthusiastic. We shall see.

Once more, this week there was no school for a day. This time it was another strike, which was probably unnecessary considering the decisive thumbs down that the public Français have just delivered to their President, le petit Sarkozy, first Hungarian of the French Republic. According to Princess 1 there is to be no blockade of the Lycee this time, as half the Bac Litt students have been moved to the new building down the road and those that remain can’t be bothered to move the bins across the entrance.

Sadly, Princess 1 has just written to UCAS to refuse the places she has been offered at the universities of Reading and Leicester in favour (in her own words), of sunshine and croissants at the Faculty in Montpellier. She will also avoid the compulsory £20,000 debt. I can’t really say I am surprised.

PS. For those among you who are interested, so far the electric fence has deterred the Wild Pigs. Hopefully they have found another venue for their raves.