France is not for the fainthearted

OK, this is only partially about Provence. It's also about living (or trying to live) in France, when you are that dirty word: foreign.

The first round in the election has clarified several issues. The population is somewhere over 65 million. Millions of French voters abstained. Millions were too young to vote. Everyone's talking about percentages so I've seen no actual figures on voters. But let's say 35 million voted. If that's roughly correct, over 10 million of those voters rejected the two main parties. Seven million of them voted for the Front National. Millions voted for the Front de Gauche. Add those figures to the abstentions and you have a truly huge number of French voters who reject Sarkozy and Hollande too. It's a "peste on both your houses".

Marine Le Pen did particularly well in Provence-PACA, as did Carla's husband. It's quite something to walk down the streets of a pretty market town in Provence and realise that one in five of the people around you voted Front National. Fiercely patriotic, one has to assume that many detest or at least resent foreigners. As it happens, I understand why. I know several young men struggling to earn a living who would like to work hard and earn a reasonable wage and they simply can't get a break. I can see how they reason when they think about their lives in Provence. The failure of leadership at national level - and/or the crisis at international level - means they look around for solutions. And Marine Le Pen seems to offer them. What the hell are all these foreigners doing in Provence, for example? As an immigrant, albeit European, I get that. How come I bought a lovely home here while Pierre, who has a young wife and a baby on the way, can hardly afford to rent? It's not immediately apparent to him that I worked hard for 30 years to have that home. Longer than he's been alive! He would reply, no doubt, that he knows plenty of elderly Provençaux who have not been able to buy comfortable homes. I don't know what the answer is. And nor, I'm pretty sure, do any of the candidates in the presidential election.

But I was going to go on to say something about being foreign in Provence/France and it's this. Daily life, in so far as it concerns local people and nature, can be blissful. But the companies you need to deal with are like huge, grinding machines that, once they get you in their jaws, will make you feel your life is not worth living.

The first rule of Fight Club was "There are no rules". Dealing with EDF, France Telecom and others is pretty much like that. You're viewed as a tiny, miniscule, worthless cog in a gigantic machine and you are never allowed to forget it. I've had, since 2004 when I came to live in Provence, four solid years of hassle over health care ('the system' admits that as a European I have a right to a Carte Vitale - they just won't send me one); two years of hassle over internet and telephone lines (I'll spare you the detail); and getting on for 6 months of hassle over electricity supply. The lastest EDF hoo-ha is that their meter stopped working in May 2010 - it was full of ants apparently - and they "estimated" that I owed them another 2080 euros on top of what I'd already paid.

Last week, they sent me a letter saying that they'd bill me for 2011 in 2013 once they'd seen what I spent on electricity in 2012. (Yes, I know....). This week, they sent me a letter saying that since I'd failed to pay 2080 euros - Whaaaaaaa? - they were sending a man to cut off my electricity. Now, I 'm a tolerant person but I fail to see how that equates to any kind of customer service and I imagine it may even contradict laws on human rights. After all, I live in a forest and when my electricity's cut off, I lose my water too. (I have well-water, not town water.)

The casual threat to cut off my supply was pretty shocking. Complicating matters was the fact that my EDF "space online" - instead of showing their guestimate that I owed them 2080 euros - showed a facture saying they owed me 5 euros. Go figure, as the Americans say.

When I discussed this total chaos with my partner he looked thoughtful and then said he thought my problems - with RAM-GAMEX, with EDf, with France Telecom - probably are essentially related to the fact that my name is identifiably not French. Boylan is pretty clearly Irish and quintessentially non-French. In addition he said it doesn't help that I'm female and divorced. It all adds up to being not exactly displaced, but certainly mal-placed.... He was born in Provence and has lived his whole life here. I asked him: "Have you ever known anyone local, anyone Provençal, to have the same problems over such a long period of time?" And he said: "No".

My neighbour however, married to a Swiss guy, said: "Oh yes. That's normal. My husband waited 4 years too, for his Carte Vitale."

Yet during the French elections, we saw candidates addressing French voters in London. And the French in London are accepted as Europeans with the same rights as the English (and just about anyone else who washes up on England's shores.) The same cannot be said, in my experience, of non-French Europeans in France. We may have rights in Europe and the French, officially, agree that we have. They're just not always delivered. It gives a certain depth to the realisation, as I walk down the street in my adopted hometown, that one in five of the people around me voted against the idea of anyone foreign living in Provence.

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Er....you STILL haven't read Present Tense? What? You don't have a Kindle or something? Jeez....get with the freaking programme!

Sarkozy, Hollande and Le Pen in Provence

The French presidential election is off to a fine start in Provence, with the usual mudslinging and waffle that accompany political campaigns. Candidates Sarkozy, Marine le Pen and Hollande have all been duffing each other up in Marseille, whipping their respective audiences into a frenzy of enthusiasm, adulation and flag waving. Hollande had his crowd singing La Marseillaise after telling them he loved Marseille because it was the town that gave France its national anthem.

Sarkozy, for the UMP, made a rather strange appeal to his supporters at the Parc Chanot in France's violent second city. With people being slaughtered on the streets and housing estates in the casually murderous Marseille drug wars - kalashnikovs and drive-by killings y compris - you might think he'd offer something in the way of help to citizens trying to go about their business in a hail of bullets.Yet he asked the people of Marseille and France to help him. "Aidez-moi!" he cried. To which a voter might reply: "You're missing the point."

Front National leader and presidential candidate Marine le Pen pitched up at the same hall soon after Sarkozy, confident in the support she has in the south of France. Aiming a direct punch at the president, she risked offending the people of Marseille by telling them bluntly that the city is a symbol of Sarkozy's failure in government. He had failed, she said, to curb immigration and crack down on violence.

Then Parti Socialiste candidate Hollande toddled down from Paris with a checklist of good works he will perform if elected. More housing. Check. More jobs. Check. Better healthcare. Check. The socialist president of the PACA region, Michel Vauzelle, had issued an Appel du Sud - Appeal from the South - before Hollande's visit. His list of demands was far more precise - high-speed rail link between Nice and Paris, a voie rapide between Gap and Grenoble and freight rail links between Marseille and Turin to run through the Durance valley up to a tunnel to be cut through Montgenèvre. This last development, says the Appel, would ‘open up’ the Hautes-Alpes and Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Hollande replied cautiously that if elected he'll organise a 'contract' with southern France.

The other candidates have a lower profile than Sarko, Le Pen and Hollande. Mélenchon, for the Front de gauche and Francois Bayrou for the centrist MoDems get a mention in conversation locally but polls show that the UMP, PS and FN candidates are the three front runners in Provence as in France more widely.

Le Pen has only just scraped together her 500 mayoral signatures to become an official candidate. She complained that some French mayors were pressured not to support her. This is by the by, but I had a run-in with her bodyguards a couple of weeks ago at the Salon d'Agriculture in Paris where she was arguing against halal slaughter of livestock. (See photo featuring Le Pen and skinhead.) Someone threw a glass at her and her squad of skinhead heavies took off in pursuit. There was a ridiculous chase round the hall, where thousands of people were milling about eating spicy sausages from La Réunion and gently admiring exotic flowers from French Guyana. The press and TV were filming Le Pen of course. I followed the heavies and found them circling a tall black guy, snarling at him and pointing fingers in his face. So I took a picture and was immediately pounced on. They surrounded me, grabbed my arm and tried to swipe my camera. One of them said "We're police" so I said "Show me your badges". They growled a bit and twisted my arm a bit more. "Erase the photo or we'll take the camera" they said. Hmmm. I had a lot of photos on there that I wanted to keep and I wasn't at the Salon to film Le Pen's cranes rasés. I erased the photo while an elderly  woman protested (the only one among all the onlookers). "Why should she have to erase a photo in a public place?" she asked. However, I escaped with my camera intact and a sore shoulder.

Talking to people around here about the election there seems to be no great enthusiasm for Sarkzoy although the polls currently tip him to beat Hollande in the first round. Hollande seems the more unsure of the two - he appealed to voters not to abstain, telling them that the extreme right could benefit from abstentions as it did in 2002, when Chirac unexpectedly faced Jean-Marie le Pen in the second round.

There is plenty of cycnicism about candidates and political parties and it's visible on campaign posters around Provence. Here's some expressive handiwork on a poster at the  farmers' market in Velleron. Mélenchon needn't feel bad though. All the candidates are getting the same treament.

And even DSK is on election posters for the right wing. "DSK" the poster proclaims: "the values of the left wing." Ouch! Unfair, surely?, given that DSK's destiny has taken him from the brothel to the courtroom and far from the campaign tail.

It'll be interesting to see how the first round of the election plays out. A feeling at the start of the campaign that François Hollande had it in the bag has, for the moment, dissipated. The outcome seems less predictable since voters are unsure which, if any, candidate has answers to the pressing problems they face. Précarité, or insecurity, is a big issue. The French are worried about jobs, the purchasing power of the euro, the high price of homes, high rent, crime, and many worry about immigration and lack of integration. Sarkozy is saying he'll reduce immigration in a clear bid to pull the rug out from beneath Le Pen. In Provence there is both significant distaste for the Front National and significant support. Traditionally, the FN opposed immigration from north Africa and presented immigrants from the Maghreb as problematic. Immigration is wider now of course and so other races and nationalities are in the frame. The Appel du Sud, with its left-wing supporters, complains that people from northern Europe are taking over Provence and PACA. They are accused of creating 'ghettos of the rich' and a region of second-homes. They are no doubt joined in that view by supporters of Le Pen. I was talking to a young stonemason the other day who was complaining that he cannot afford even the smallest apartment in Provence. "I understand the support for the FN" he told me. "There are too many immigrants in this region. But it's not the Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians causing the problem in my view. It's the Swiss, Dutch, Belgians,Americans and British." "Sorry" he said, looking sheepish. "But everyone in the north wants to live in Provence for the sun and the way of life. We haven't got room. We can't take everybody."

Seems the left and the right are agreed on one thing in this election then.

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Fire at midnight in Provence

There's always something going on around here. Tonight it was fire on the hillside by my house. All over the hillside as it happens. Lots of it. And in a high wind. So I'm sitting here typing with burnt shoes, dirt on my (sore) hands, ash on my face and twigs in my hair. I'll explain why in a minute.

I heard a commotion after midnight and looked out of the window to see fire engines arriving at speed. As there's only one other house up this track, I feared it must be on fire. But looking out of another window I saw the entire hillside a few hundred yards away was ablaze. There were big fat orange fires all over the place.

I hopped into a pair of jeans, pulled on a jumper and jacket, got in my car and raced up the track. It was pitch black apart from the fire engine headlights - and the fires. The firemen couldn't figure out, in the dark, how best to access the hillside. The narrow limestone tracks around here don't accommodate anything much larger than a wheelbarrow. "Can we get through over there?" they asked. "Or over there?" Nope. You'll have to go through the vineyard, I explained. There didn't seem to be any way they could get to the fires furthest up the hill though. I hoped fire engines were on their way from the other direction, Pernes-les-Fontaines.

Looking around, I wasn't very confident the men could get this under control. There were maybe eight or ten of them - hard to say in the dark with everyone moving around. But there were huge fires blazing and such high winds that thousands of sparks were blowing from each one, creating new outbreaks all over the place. There were streams of sparks flying everywhere.

The guys started rolling out hoses to deal with the big fires. They'd already realised that there were hundreds of sheep about a hundred yards away so they started dousing flames nearest to the animals (who were naturally panicking.) I jumped down into the neighbouring vineyard because there were around a dozen small fires starting up there as a result of sparks flying. They'd already taken a bit of a hold so I scrabbled to cover them with earth and stones. Again, as fast as I put one out sparks created another. I stamped some out and buried others. My hands got scratched and torn; my shoes got burnt. My face, when I got home, was partially black from the smoke. Everyone worked hard for well over an hour and I don't think an hour ever passed so quickly. When I eventually looked up, the large fires seemed to be under control. I alerted the firemen to one persistent small fire that I couldn't put out.

They assured me they'd get it and said I shouldn't worry. I could go home and sleep.

It was nearly 2am when I got back to the house and I heard the fire engines leave after 2. Having seen branches and vine roots smoking and smouldering, I just hoped they'd really doused all the wood that had caught light. Over such a wide area I wasn't sure they could have.

Anyway, it's nearly 3am now and I don't think I'll sleep tonight. An all-night vigil feels necessary...

It was a strange coincidence the fire tonight, though. Everyone knows that if there's one thing people in Provence fear, it's fire. February fire is not the first type that comes to mind of course. Usually, residents fear forest fire in the baking hot summer when trees and vegetation are bone dry. But this morning I was driving along merrily in my car and it went through my mind that the f-word is something I hardly even like to think of or let cross my mind, let alone say. Somehow, it's as if, if you think it or say it, it'll happen - that idea of conjuring up what you think about. And there is something peculiar here in this spot of the Provençal forest - I've often thought of something, good or bad, that has promptly happened or turned up...

Anyway - what appears to have started the fire is that, on land belonging to a local family, the Bressys, old fruit trees have been uprooted over the last few weeks to make way for a new plantation. Trunks, roots and branches have been burnt on the hillside in several daytime bonfires just to get rid of them. I didn't take any notice of the fires really because farmers quite often burn stuff around here and usually know what they're doing. My guess is that another bonfire was lit today and that, tonight, unextinguished sparks and cinders must have been fanned into flames by the high winds. Then fires broke out right across the hillside around midnight.

Except that....come to think of it, I walked by there this afternoon on my way to feed a neighbour's cat and there wasn't any sign of fire then. Odd, but no doubt I'll hear more tomorrow from Lionel Toutlemonde, one of the local firemen who knows all the village news. For the next few hours though, I'll just keep an eye on the hillside and if I see so much as a wisp of flame I'll be dialling the pompiers, fast.

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A (sheep) murder mystery in Provence

As elsewhere in Europe, we're having glacial cold in Provence, courtesy of sub-zero Siberian winds. Ice several inches think has lain on the track outside my house for several weeks now with no sign of thawing even on sunny afternoons.

When Antoine, the hardy local shepherd, turned up with his flock this week I wondered if the sheep (and several goats) would survive night after night of -12° out in the scrubby forestland beside my home. "It's no problem for them" he said gruffly, as he secured string fencing beside the track. They are after all covered in leather and thick wool. He reminded me that the great advantage of having the flock down here in the Vaucluse (in winter) as opposed to up in the Alps (in summer) is that there's no danger they'll be killed by wolves. He and other shepherds in the Hautes-Alpes lost around 40 sheep to wolves in summer 2011.

I walked home along the track on the evening the sheep arrived and looked at their ghostly forms and faces in the moonlight. Although it was dark they were still moving and grazing but turned to look at me with vacant eyes as they chewed scraps of freezing vegetation. The huge white Pyrenean dog who guards the flock came rushing at me, barking in his deep, throaty voice. Babar's a beautiful animal. As long as you don't nip over the fencing he'll do nothing more than bark at you. There was a second guard dog behind him, equally large but black. Antoine has always said that his dogs would attack any wolf, person or dog getting in among the sheep so I was careful to speak softly to them and keep walking past.

The only other house around here belongs to neighbours who spend time, variously, in Paris and Casablanca. The daughter of the family is here this week and she has two dogs too. One is a tiny Alsatian pup, just a peluche (a cuddly toy.) The other, Coco, is a French bull dog. Over at their place the other day I noticed Coco eating celery and peppers and was told that, while not vegetarian, she loves fruit and veg. She's 4 years old, very small and structured like a small pig. What I mean by that is that she's absolutely solid - made of compact and powerful muscle. Still, she's a soppy little dog and very affectionate.

An hour or two after I walked past the sheep and guard dogs, Coco's owner appeared at my door in tears. "I've lost Coco" she said. "In the dark. And it's freezing. I didn't know the sheep were here. I let her outside the house and she took off like train. Antoine's dogs will kill her. Even if they don't she'll die outside overnight. She's small and she has virtually no coat."

It was well below zero as we grabbed flashlights and went separate ways in to the forest. "Take care not to go behind the fences" I told her. "Babar doesn't know you and he could attack. And call Antoine" I suggested. As I circled the area where the sheep and goats were, now completely hidden in the pitch black, I could hear one or two bells tinkling as animals moved away from me. I couldn't see or hear Babar or the second dog. I could hear Emmanuelle calling Coco and I called out too. Normally Coco would come if he heard his owner's voice but we searched for over an hour and there was no sign of her. I knew Emmanuelle would be fearing her pet had been killed by the dogs.

Eventually I gave up and walked down to her house. As I approached, I heard her call out: "I've got her! I've found her!" Emmanuelle came over and said: "Come and look at her - she's covered in blood."
"Badly injured?" I asked
"No" she replied. "Most of it's not hers. She's obviously killed a sheep."

We went over to the house and inspected Coco. She looked like a victim in a horror movie, dripping blood, but in high spirits tempered with a touch of guilt. She had clearly been grazed by, presumably, sheep hooves but she smelt so strongly of sheep that it was pretty clear she'd been eating one. We'd spent an hour and a half in the freezing night worrying that she was being slaughtered by Babar where in fact it was Coco who was doing the slaughtering. The reason why she'd ignored her owner's calls was that she was busy butchering one of the flock.

As we stood there chatting, headlights appeared at the end of the drive.
"Who is it?" we yelled.
"Antoine". He jumped out of his van and strode towards us.
"Did you find your dog?" he asked. It was clear that he figured his dogs had probably massacred Coco.
"Yes." Emmanuelle replied. "And I think she's killed one of your sheep..."

The next morning I walked down the track to the neighbouring hameau. The flock had moved off to another spot, but down in the dip to my right I spotted a solitary sheep, on its side, clearly dead and bloodstained.

A neighbour in the little hamlet told me Antoine had called him that morning for Emmanuelle's number. He needed to deal with the dead sheep and Emmanuelle could provide details for the insurance claim.

"Evidently Coco is not the cuddly vegetarian bull dog everyone thought she was" my neighbour commented.
"Nope. She's not. I just saw the animal she killed."
He shook his head.
"Animals" he stressed. "Antoine looked the flock over this morning and there are two butchered sheep."

I walked home a little later and saw Babar curled up by the side of the track. It was still freezing and he had his large fluffy tail covering his nose. He wiggled his eyebrows at me but couldn't be bothered to bark. "How come?" I said to him. "How come you let a little dog ten times smaller than you savage two of your flock and I never even heard you bark?" Like Coco after the killings, he looked a little guilty. I can't figure it out and I guess it will remain a mystery. But it was intriguing to discover that the rough, tough and very large guard dog did not perform as he was trained to - while the little family pet didn't hesitate to go in for the kill.

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The blog posts you read here are true. But Present Tense is fiction. If you feel like a bit of escapism, download the book to your Kindle. (You do have a Kindle?....)

Organised crime in Provence

Wouldn't you think that if you were a gangster involved in organized crime on the Cote d'Azur and made your living riding around on Yamahas shooting other gangsters, it would occur to you that one day someone would ride up on a motorbike and shoot you?

Apparently it didn't occur to mobsters Stéphane Tixier and Amadéo Titeux because they were completely taken by surprise when a gunman roared into the MIN fruit and veg wholesale market in Nice yesterday morning and shot the pair of them. (Admittedly it was only 7.20am so they may not have been entirely with it.) Killed in a hail of bullets amongst the oranges and aubergines, the two men may just have had time to say to each other: "How come we didn't this coming?"

The MIN (marché d’intérêt national) is a busy market selling fruit, vegetables and other agricutural products. Tixier and Titeux were at two stands belonging to Cash Fruits - presumably more interested in the cash than the fruit - when two motorbikes arrived and the driver of one opened fire. The assassin escaped with his accomplice and the two killers then burnt one of the bikes, a Yamaha, and escaped together on the other. Police quickly found the burnt out bike at Saint-Laurent-du-Var.

Tixier (49) and Titeux (41) were both heavily involved in organised crime (grand banditisme) on the Riviera and had served prison sentences for taking part in at least one murder.

They were jailed for 12 years each for their part in the killing of Philippe Di Cristo, 30, another big bandit, who was shot dead in front of a video-club at Cagnes-sur-Mer in January 2002. Tixier and Titeux were, no less, the drivers of the two motorbikes used in the murder. It seems the hit was organised by a third man, Jacques Sordi, a key figure in organised crime on the Riviera and known as ‘le Général’. Sordi was jailed for 15 years.

Not long after they were freed (for good behaviour?) Tixier and Titeux were hauled in by police on the Cote d’Azur and questioned about the murder of Thierry Derlan, 39, who was killed in 2010. Derlan was a rising goodfella on the Riviera and considered an expert at evading police and rival crime gangs. His expertise let him down on a lovely May day when he was hit by seven bullets outside his own home in Nice.

There is a strangely satisfying symmetry about murderous gangsters knocking each other off, especially when they're killed in exactly the way they've killed others. The fact that such killings are seen as more or less hermetically sealed wihin their own criminal network was somewhat underlined by the police response to Tixier and Titeux's deaths. They put a tactful 'cordon of security' round the market but told traders to carry on selling their fruit and veg. Notwithstanding two drive-by shootings, trading at the MIN, the local paper reported, was not interrupted.

Organized crime on the Cote d'Azur is making plenty of local headlines recently. A major trial in Marseille started this week which aims to hammer Corsican gangsters who have set up protection and extortion rackets across Provence and in Paris. Jacques Mariani, the main defendant, is a surviving member of a Corsican gang elegantly named Brise de Mer (Sea Breeze.) Mariani is accused of having established a widespread extortion racket in and around Aix-en-Provence. While he was quietly having his breakfast in jail yesterday morning before appearing in the dock, police in Marseille and Aix-en-Provence were breaking down doors and dragging men into police wagons. They arrested 30 sleepy suspects from a rival Corsican gang, Bergers de Venzolasca (Venzolasca shepherds).

Leaving aside the fact that the gang names sound, respectively, like a racehorse and some sort of sports team, you have to ask yourself if being involved in organised crime is really worth it. You get to extort money out of small businessmen who run bars and nightclubs, and maybe you get rich. But one downside is that you never know when the battering ram will hit the door and the cops will haul you off to court. Another is that you're in constant rivalry with people prepared to kill you. Sea Breeze and the Shepherds are just the current crime topdogs, ready to be pushed off their perch. Before them, the Barresi and Campanella crime families controlled extortion and other criminal activities on the Riviera. And right now there'll be some other gang ready to take over from Mariani and his mob.

The guys who end up in jail in Marseille may have the best luck of course. The alternative is likely to be that one morning you're standing chatting to a fellow gangster in the market and a guy rides up on a motorbike and shoots you in the head. It may be justice of a sort, but it's not poetic.

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Breeding cattle and horses in Provence

Last night my partner and I had dinner with friends, Jean and Joelle, who live in countryside near the little village of Le Thor. During the meal (endives au jambon) my partner mentioned that at the end of February when we go to Paris to stay with his kids for a few days we're going to spend a day at the Salon d'Agriculture. This enormous agricultural fair sees French farmers, fishermen, oil, wine and honey producers and heaven knows how many other agriculteurs bringing their animals and products together under one roof in Paris for a week.

Joelle is a documentary film producer and mentioned that she'd once made a film at the Salon d'Agriculture, on breeding Charolais cattle. We got on to the topic of breeding cattle and horses and my partner recounted an incident he saw at a stud farm near his home. The boss, from the Delgado family, well known in Provence for breeding, raising and selling horses, was in a field preparing to help a stallion inseminate a mare. My partner and a few others were standing around chatting. A young girl - a stagiaire or trainee - was with Delgado to assist the insemination. My partner recounted how the boss took the stallion's erection in his hands to guide it into the mare and after a few seconds turned to the trainee and said: "Here. Take over. Take it and guide it." The teenaged girl, already embarassed, blushed beetroot and took the thing tentatively with her fingertips. "Tiens bien!" cried the boss. "Grab a hold of it." She did, amongst gales of laughter from the onlookers, and successfully guided the stallion into the mare.

This prompted a comment from Jean that the stallion was lucky: he got to mate with the mare. It's quite common on stud farms to use any old horse to 'warm the mare up'. These unfortunate horses used for foreplay often get kicked in the face or stomach by unrecepetive mares and once they've taken the blows and the mare becomes willing, they're led away and the far more valuable stallion is brought forward to finish the work of mating.

Which led to a discussion of artificial insemination in horse and cattle breeding. Lots of stud farms in Provence (as elsewhere) use AI, meaning that the mare and stallion never get a chance to meet, let alone mate naturally. Joelle then told a story about filming Charolais cattle at the Salon d'Agriculture. She was commissioned to make a film on breeding Charolais and what she quickly discovered was that not only is artificial insemination used, but so are surrogate mothers. The cows are inseminated and the resulting fertilised eggs are extracted from their uteruses and implanted in ordinary cows, ie. less valuable cows. The idea is that if an inexpensive cow has medical problems during the pregnancy, or dies giving birth, the loss is less than if a Charolaise is damaged or dies. Even if consecutive pregnancies were to go well in a Charolaise, the reasoning is that there's still less wear and tear if a mere porteuse or surrogate is used. Pregnancy is avoided and the Charolaise is simply used to supply fertilised eggs, giving calves their prized Charolais DNA.

In one conversation we went from the stallion assisted in mating in a relatively natural way to cattle reproduction in which not only do the bull and cow never meet but their calves are bred in 3rd-party uteruses and subsequently fed by machines. Which is reproduction about as alienated as you can get. Strange what the farming community gets up to when there are significant amounts of money at stake.

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It can be tempting to stay put in the Vaucluse in Provence because it's so attractive, but the region offers such easy access to other great places that you just have to move now and again. Elsewhere I've talked about the ease of getting to the Cote d'Azur, Paris, the Camargue, the Aveyron, Corsica, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Languedoc-Roussillon, Italy, Spain....

Well, last week my partner and I decided to go and ski up in the Queyras in the Hautes Alpes. The pistes looked pretty good online - plenty of snow. We booked a cheap apartment in Molines that turned out to be pretty swishy, spacious and comfortable. And off we went. The journey from Isle-sur-Sorgue took around 4 hours, via Pertuis and Sisteron.

My partner (I find I can't call a grown man a boyfriend) knows the Queyras well and told me that Molines is just beside St Veran, the highest village in Europe. The Parc Naturel Regional du Queyras is one of four such parks in PACA - Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur - the others being the Verdon, Luberon and Camargue. The Queyras is known for its beautiful mountains and valleys, its flora and fauna, its honey, and of course for skiing in the winter months.

We set off without snow chains for the car wheels, betting that the roads would be well cleared. As we neared Molines and the road climbed steeply through snowy mountains, we found the snow ploughs had been out and there was no problem. Although cascades of solid ice gripped the rocky roadside, looking like molten wax from huge candles, the sky was a perfect blue and the sun was dazzling.

The apartment we'd booked was in a new building, Le Clot la Chalp, which was slap bang in front of the alpine pistes, with the pistes ski de fond (cross-country) directly behind the building. To access the alpine pistes, you simply had to cross the road and grab the tire-fesses or take the télésiege. But since my partner broke a vertebra in a skiing accident some years ago, we'd decided to stick to ski de fond. There was a piste running just 100 yards behind the building so access to that was easy too.

Each morning we'd get up, prepare a picnic, get our gear on, pick up the skis and batons from the locker on the ground floor and off we'd go. From Molines you can ski for dozens of kilometres, picking up pistes by the river, up the mountain side, into the forest or off to St Veran. I hadn't skied for years and years and was cautious about the fairly steep ascents and descents at first. My partner was off like a hare though - whizzing over any old precipice and marching up steep slopes à pas de canard. (Like a duck, with skis angled outwards.)

Ski de fond is quite demanding physically as you have to climb quite often. On the flat, you can race along but you're still using your arm and leg muscles all the time. As the weather was so warm and sunny, I skied with my salopette and just a T-shirt much of the time. It was too warm to wear a jacket.

The pistes on the mountainsides around Molines gave wonderful views of the snowy Alps on the French-Italian border. The snow, rock and mélèze pine forest are home to many animals - the chamois, mouflon and bouquetin among them. All three come down to around 1000 metres in winter but we saw nothing but tracks in the snow. By the river we noticed many tracks leading right to the clear running water and away again.

We skied on one piste that led through forest half way up the mountain opposite St Veran. The precipice on our left was rather scary. The mountain and forest to our right were well covered by snow. A cheerful-looking sign announced we were in a zone avalanche but my partner gave a typically French shrug and told me that if I noticed an avalanche starting I should place myself behind the nearest wide tree, hang on to it and wait till the snow stopped 'running'. Right-o.

The Queyrassins build their houses, or fustes, from the local pines - mélèzes - which are well adapted to Alpine conditions. The ground floor these days is built in stone - traditionally animals were kept there - and two or three rickety-looking wooden storeys are plonked on top. The houses have wide, open wooden balconies running round the outside - usually one used in summer, for eating outside and relaxing and one used for storing or drying stuff - like cheese, perhaps, or animal fodder. Again, the balconies look fragile and rickety. Quite a few houses had interesting names - Paradis d'Enfer, was one; Ailleurs another.

In the evening we went up to St Veran. Parking was right on the edge of the mountainside in fairly thick ice and snow. If you engage first gear when you leave, rather than reverse, then your skiing holiday is over. We parked beside a large van which had its wheels about three centimetres from the abyss and was teetering in a dubious fashion.

Neither Molines nor St Veran offered much in the way of nightlife. A couple of restaurants and bars offered lethargic service. If you're looking for tranquility, you can find it in the Queyras in January. Which suited us fine.

During the day it was a different matter. Although the pistes opposite the apartment were far from crowded, there were skiers and one large group of young kids was being taught to ski. Each day the moniteurs took around 40 kids up the mountain and taught them the chasse-neige technique to bring them down gently. There was lots of shrieking and hilarity as the children fell around on the slopes.

Once the piste was closed for the day and night fell, the beautiful dameuses took to the mountain to resurface the pistes. These huge machines looked wonderful surging up into the darkness with their powerful headlights shining on the snow. We watched as the tough-looking drivers climbed into their machines and headed off together, then split in three directions to take different pistes, their lights dwindling as they climbed higher and higher on the mountain. Most nights they worked on the mountainside until after 10pm. As the temperature outside was -7° at that hour, the dameuses need to be well-maintained. Who wants to break down high in the Alps at night on a steep mountainside?

Before we went to the Queyras, we had thought of crossing over into Italy to ski on that side of the border too. But the Col Agnel is closed in winter due to the snow so we had to drop that idea. Instead we decided to investigate the trips offered with chiens de traineau. You can go out with a sled and huskies and the dogs did look beautiful racing through the snow. Four types are used: the Siberian husky (the breed with ice-blue eyes); the white-furred Samoyède; the Greenland, which is the fastest of the four; and the Malamute d'Alaska which is the least swift.

Our other option was to try raquettes which neither of us had ever used. We chose the raquettes in the end since we could go into the forest and right alongside the river with them, getting to spots you can't access with skis or dogs. The modern raquette has a great little gadget you can tip up with your baton when you come to a steep ascent. It fits under your heel and gives the impression you're walking on the flat. When you go downhill or walk on the flat again, you just flip it down with your baton. So using raquettes is less taxing physically than ski de fond.

We'll go back to the Queyras to ski again. But we'll also go in warm weather. The marmots will be out of hibernation and tootling around avoiding predators. The shepherds will arrive with their flocks and the great sheepdogs that attempt to keep wolves at bay. The beekeepers will bring their hives so their bees can make the famous miel toutes fleurs of the Queyras. Edelweiss, saxifrage, absinthe and other alpine flowers will carpet the slopes where we only saw snow and pine trees. And we'll follow the same pistes we skied along, under the same blue skies.

If mountain air practically drugs you, and I believe it does, then I can imagine becoming addicted to visiting the Queyras. This is an alpine paradise where you can skate in Abriès village in winter on a natural outdoor skating rink. Where the dark orange water in the two sources at Guillestre flows at a steady temperature of 28°. Where you can go kayaking, birdwatching or ice-climbing. Or drive a team of huskies. Or simply ski and fill your lungs with clean mountain air while gazing at the beautiful Alps.