Regular Columns

A Night on the Town

Long gone are my boogie nights. 

I remember rushing home from work, leaping in the bath and doing the statutory leg shave, painting all available nails and throwing on glad rags for a night out with my chums.

I don’t mean to sound like I am 104 or anything, but they are just not my scene anymore.  Even if they were, I don’t think my quiet corner of rural France has any glitter-balls anyway.

My idea of a good night out now involves a comfortable chair, good company and sharing bottle of local red stuff with some great food.  C'est une meilleure idée, je pense/a better idea I think…

As my days become busier, my nights are more precious and if I am not tapping the keys of my trusty pc, I am to be found under the arm of my lovely husband in a relaxing position, in the company of music or an entertaining old movie. 

I could not understand, therefore, how I managed to get roped into helping make flowers in our village hall on a Monday night in mid-winter!

I promised a sweet neighbour I would attend and lend a hand, thinking it would be much the same as any other village hall…cold, dank, with the odd mouse mincing around.  I arrived in several irremovable layers of clothes - irremovable, because the middle layer came out of a grubby fracas with the children slightly the worse for wear and I had no time to change.

You would be lucky to count 10 cars going through our village on a busy day, so you can imagine my surprise when I arrived to find a room with more people in it than a Bingo Hall on a Link-Up night.

The place was a hive of industry.  There were about 40 people in total, moitié, moitié/half and half, men and women alike and I was greeted with 10 minutes of kissing, which is quite the norm. 

The place was like a sauna and many red faces sat chatting, laughing, folding and fluffing out flowers from colourful plastic sheets. 

There were clearly 3 jobs.  Makers, fluffer-outers and tie-uppers.  After a brief demonstration I decided to be a maker and I took my respective place at the far end of the table.  It was ideal for me as I could observe and listen to the many conversations, which would hopefully improve my French.  I sat beside my dear English friend Jen and we both looked at each other and laughed out loud. 

The strong community sprit in this teeny tiny village was overwhelming.  The night was wet, cold and miserable and yet everybody turned out to play their important part.  We were gobsmacked. 

I felt like the person at a funeral who gets the giggles and wishes the ground would just open up and swallow them.  Not wishing to appear rude was so hard to carry off and Jen and I read each other’s minds and tried to stifle the feelings.  Unfortunately, what with the central heating being on the high side and our schoolgirl tittering, our faces soon made us look like a couple of Swan Vesta matches, ready to strike!

There was no way Jen could keep her layers on and she tentatively parted company with a fluffy jumper to reveal her attractive thermal (thankfully lace edged) underwear, which passed off rather well as a tee shirt.  Of course, this was fuel to the laughing fire and I tried my hardest to focus on the job in hand.

We eventually got a grip on ourselves and before too long, we were knocking the fleurs out at a rate of about 1 per minute, which was good going.

The gentlemen collected the finished products and tied them onto great long strings that stretched across half the length of the hall and there was a great sense of unspoken teamwork.   

We decided to just play our parts down, be quiet and industrious, hoping it would make up for looking like a couple of English donuts when we arrived.  The whole place was in such high spirits and it seemed the main purpose of the evening might not be the flowers after all, but a good excuse to get together, do something nice for our festival, the Foire de Pruneau and have a good natter at the same time.

We worked like dogs for just over 2 straight hours and by the time everybody was shuffling around in a “it’s nearly time to go” style, we were spitting feathers for a cup of tea.  The chairs were stacked, the tables dismantled, the flowers packed away in boxes and stored under the floor, then out of nowhere, came a kettle, tea, coffee, wine, water, 40 glasses and cups and 4 enormous gateaux!  So THAT’S what it’s all about, we thought!

We dined on the home made delicacies and tea at almost 11pm on that cold, wet Lundi soir and after the second helping of the first offered cake, we spent 10 minutes kissing and saying “Au revior, la semaine procaine/until next week” and hopped into the car.

The sugar buzz kept me awake for hours that night.  Well, that and the realisation that our misleadingly timid village was quite the place to be seen.  As for Jen, I think a little more of her was seen than was planned, but she took it on the chin.

We have been going for a month now and have an absolute blast.  This week, our pastor was celebrating 45 years serving in our village église/church and God bless him, he brought 3 bottles of champagne!