Mougins at last

Sometimes people who live close by are the last to visit local sights and attractions. It took a visit from a Parisian friend to finally persuade us to take a peep at Mougins, a swish commuter town with a medieval hilltop village at its centre. We'd almost been there countless times, as the hospital I attended is on the outskirts...

Our first problem was how to get there. From Antibes you can get to within almost spitting distance and then you hit the pénétrante, or approach road, to Grasse. It is like newsreels from the cold war, with Berliners forlornly gazing across the Wall towards inaccessible family and friends. We hit the wrong road, of course, and were soon hurtling along the approach road - back towards Cannes.

Several kilometers closer to the sea we came to a roundabout with a tiny sign to the vieux village. So back we went, only yards from where we had been before, but now with a hope of crossing over or under the approach road. In the event, it was under.

Once in the village, having parked our car in the immense, terraced carpark (not a place I would like to frequent in the tourist season), we headed for the historic centre. It was the usual Côte d'Azur mix of estate agents, soap and scent shops, and, worst of all, 'art' galleries (for a taste of what 'taste' really means, including the famous barfing dog, worthy of Leonardo da Vinci, try this). For some reason, they forget the initial f in art. These traditional Provençal métiers show absolutely no sign of dying out, unlike fishing, basket weaving, genuine pottery manufacture and flower cultivation, and the range of surnames is a veritable sampler of old Occitanie: Schmith, Rafferty, Zingraf.

Still, despite being tarted up, the village was still striking, even if some of the larger properties had built cyclopean walls to privatise the view over the Mediterranean, in case any plebs or tourists should get the silly idea of looking at nature instead of (f)art.

Final voyage

Today, under a threatening sky and the beginnings of a serious chop, we took the lifeboat out for the scattering of the ashes of my lifeboat buddy's grandma. An Italian family, but with a tendency to speak French amongst themselves. My buddy took the helm for the last voyage, and everybody had a lump in their throats.

I'd warned the other members of the family that the urn might take a while to sink, and that they should be prepared emotionally for this, but they were convinced that their complicated Italian model would perform well. In the event, the bronze-coloured urn was almost as seaworthy as the lifeboat: it crested the waves and took the troughs with ease. We circled grimly around the stubbornly bobbing urn as the family got more and more upset. Finally it took its dive and with a last blast on the siren we headed for port. It had been difficult.

This evening, ever a creature of habit, I was polishing another lifeboat - a plastic one for collecting money, which an English shop in Antibes has kindly agreed to host. The caked muck on this one was not salt and seagull dung but coffee and biscuit crumbs.

Gleaming

Spent the morning, along with most of the other lifeboatmen, polishing the lifeboat to within an inch of its life. The reason? The boat is going out tomorrow afternoon to scatter the ashes of one of the crewmen's grandparents. The crewman, in contrast to normal hierarchy, will be skippering his gran on her last journey. We wanted his boat (and hers) to be spotless.

Crested fauna

Yesterday, on my way back from a particularly electrifying session of physiotherapy, I was passing by the cavernous entrance to a motorbike garage. Inside were various two wheelers, ranging from the usual scooters, which make life difficult here, through to sleek racing bikes with lightweight frames and low-slung handlebars. A smell of two-stroke hung in the air...

Out of this cavern hobbled an old man of at least eighty, with what I can only describe as a dirty old man's raincoat. He was grinning as he hobbled across the workshop floor towards the sunlight. Then he stopped. I thought he was going to talk to me.

Instead, he turned towards a silver scooter - one of those fat, streamlined ones which looks like a fairground bumping car - unlocked the 'boot' behind the saddle and pulled out his helmet, one of those integral bone domes which make people look like the Mekon from Dan Dare.

Looked at from closer to, once he had donned it, I could see it was a hilarious affair, covered with dayglow flames from hell, and surmounted (as a final rage against age) by a fifty centimetre high mohican plume in bright orange. It was like a bronze age warrior's helmet. Dirty old man's mac aside, he would not have been amiss at the siege of Troy...

Crackdown

On my way back this morning from settling the bill for having the staples out (see January 4th blog), I was passing through the small park next to the roundabout on the rue de la République. The sun was bleaching the paving stones, drying out the ubiquitous dog turds, and generally making me forget what a crap winter we have had.

Suddenly, there was a sharp, but not excessively loud crack. A bit like bursting a crisp bag (I don't know whether teenagers still do that). I looked round, as did a rather startled municipal policeman, whose hand had already reached towards his holster.

A puff of smoke hung in the air. Some kind of explosive device had been set off. The explanation was not hard to find. There, straight in front of me, was a fine-meshed net spread wide over the pavement, and beneath it were scores of live, but rather offended pigeons, which had been lured by a prodigious quantity of breadcrumbs.

Several onlookers looked on horrified as the birds were bundled unceremoniously into a plastic box by heavily gloved workmen. "Good when cooked in a pie", I commented. The policeman agreed, with a smile, but the other spectators gave me a dirty look.

Healthy Exercises

This time of year is important for the lifeboat station. It is a moment when there aren't too many shouts and yet there is good enough weather and light to do essential repairs on the lifeboat and practice using lifesaving gear on dry land. Such practice is important, in that there is enough room for everybody to see and change places (each person needs to know exactly what the other people in the team are doing).

Amongst the essential repairs was an inspection/replacement of the chain linking our mooring ropes to the main chain (chaine mère), hidden in the slimy depths of the harbour. One of our crew members, Christophe, is a professional diver as well as a tugboat captain, and he volunteered to brave the none-too-clean waters of Port Vauban to have a look. Visibility is about 40cms, and boats pass all the time. Not a job for an amateur.

Here is the sequence, until he disappeared under the surface, bearing a bag of tools...


The seagull droppings are worthy of Steve Bell's If strip, and even more impressive when you realise that I had scrubbed the deck and railings the evening before.




He did come back, having duly repaired the chain.

The other tasks involved cleaning and doing an inventory on the lifesaving gear, including the vacuum stretchers, which start soft, but become rock hard when you pump the air out. They are really useful when evacuating a victim in confined spaces such as engine rooms or companionways. One of the new guys, Eric, wanted to see what it was like to be trussed up in one. So we belted him in and started pumping. We pumped enthusiastically, as we wanted the stretcher to be really, really hard. Then we left him on the quayside for a bit, and had coffee and home made cakes provided by Ludovic's mum...


And then we left him just a little bit bit more. When eventually released he asked us whether we gave out anxiety drugs to the victims, as he had felt like a turkey readied for the Christmas roast.

Revitalised

After a long and somewhat anxious wait, I have been reissued with a carte vitale. I really thought for a while that I was falling between the cracks, uninsurable privately and uncoverable publicly. A nice Mrs Pailhe from the CPAM laboured to find a solution, even contacting the social security's legal department for advice. Boy, does it feel good to have an identity again.

Not Ventimiglia

Today was a day we had set aside for going to Ventimiglia, just over the border with Italy. Our reason for going there, apart from the fun of the outing, was to stock up at the market (better and far cheaper than Antibes) and bring back bottles of strong neutral alcohol for making limoncello. For some reason, in France such hooch of the appropriate strength is only available from pharmacies, in medicinal doses, and chemists are now very reluctant to sell even those minute amounts.

So this morning, dressed in warm and waterproof clothes, we braved the rain and headed for the station. The St Valentine's deal offering a cheap return for the BH on the back of my OAP railcard turned out not to be valid, which was just the first thing to get us annoyed.

Armed with the full price tickets, we rushed to the platform, thinking we would only just catch (or miss) the train. But this was without taking into account the systematic delays on the coast railway line. Just as we surfaced onto the platform, the first announcement came over the tannoy: ten minutes' delay. We waited twenty minutes, and then some. Now the tannoy announced twenty minutes: we could have told them that ourselves.

After thirty five minutes, and a train which, unexplained, turned up, but destined for a different town, much to the confusion of passengers, there was at last an honest announcement. Our train to Ventimiglia was "subject to delays which the SNCF were presently incapable of evaluating".

That was it: no point in hanging around. Trains like that get cancelled, invariably, along with the next three. Down through the subway, up the other side, and back to the ticket office for a refund.

The tickets were refunded, minus a surcharge because "we had changed our mind". If we had changed our minds, what had they done with their train? Had they changed their mind about when (or indeed if) it was running? The BH asked for a complaints form, which was duly handed over with a shrug.

So no Ventimiglia today, and the limoncello is on hold.

Potty Training

I'm pretty used to training schedules with the lifeboat. Saturday mornings are filled with routines on first aid, rules of navigation, firefighting etc.. Training is what keeps you alive.

But now I'm on another weekly training schedule. This time it is to retrain the bits of me that got seriously re-mapped, or even lost, with the various operations I had last autumn. The physiotherapist, whose glorious task it is to potty-train me, is as patient and supportive as the lifeboat cox, but, being female, a good deal more glamorous. Still, a white coat and rubber gloves do wonders to turn her into the same kind of authority figure as Lolo1. If I was already willing to make a fool of myself casting towlines with him, then I am, I suppose, equally game for some of the rather embarrassing exercises with her.

After a long session taking general notes about my physical condition, she beckoned me into the treatment room. Expecting the worst, at her command I dropped my trousers and climbed up onto the treatment couch. I asked myself silently which part of my body she was going to apply her skills to first. Figure my surprise when she started checking the articulations, starting with toes and working up, via the ankles, to the knees, hips, etc., right up to the neck. I didn't have to waggle my ears, though, which was something of a relief.

It seems that the way forward, for the kind of post-operative problem I have, is to treat the whole body, including breathing. "γνῶθι σεαυτόν: know thyself", a Greek once (or maybe more than once, considering the saying is attributed to a confusing range of thinkers) famously enjoined, and it was clear I didn't know my body very well.

Lesson one was indeed heavily concentrated on breathing, with the diaphragm and abdominal muscles particularly implicated. I wonder where, holistically, she will turn to next week?

Gendarme Time

Part of my post-operative therapy consists in strolling over to the lifeboat and giving the brass- and metal-work a good RNLI-style polish. Given that such obsessive-compulsive behaviour towards lifeboats seems to be a British but not French tradition, there is quite a lot of verdigris and tarnish to buff away. Still, it is a pleasant, open-air activity, with a free view of all the boats going in and out of the harbour, and often a friendly wave from their crews into the bargain.

Today's polishing session took place alongside the Gendarmerie's spring-cleaning of their veteran vedette, our neighbour in the berth, nearly thirty years old. The gendarmes of the sea patrol are a friendly and talkative bunch, with a nice line in wry humour. We are, of course, on kissing terms...

Naturally, a conversation started up, only interrupted on occasion by their stentorian shouts and threats when boats exceeded the speed-limit for the port. Their job in swabbing down the old tub was the nautical equivalent of washing a corpse. When I commiserated with them for the boat's vétusté, they just shrugged their shoulders and said that the craft would have to see them through their careers and probably that of the next wave of recruits. This could be explained, they said, by the fact that the plans for a replacement were well advanced, but took place necessarily in 'gendarme time', which is much slower than any other computation used in accountancy.

Put into gendarme time, then, the present boat is actually very new, despite its years, thus the absolute logic in not replacing it yet.

Back Onboard

Not only has the weather been getting a lot better this week: I've been getting better, too. So much so that I have started to attend lifeboat exercises again.

Today's lesson was firefighting drill. Fire is the worst possible thing to happen on a boat, as there is nowhere to go to get away from the risk. The fact that boats are full to the brim with inflammable (and sometimes explosive) substances adds a certain spice to the experience. In addition, many modern boats are made out of plastics and resins which are very difficult to extinguish once well alight.

So it was all hands to the pumps, literally, as we followed the water sequence from seacocks in the bilges, through pumping gear in the engine room, through piping, hydrants, connectors, hoses and nozzles, all with terrifying dos and don'ts. Given that the pressure behind a firehose can blow a man clean off the boat, we were all very attentive, and just a little apprehensive, when it came to doing the practice, as opposed to the theory.

First off, the water-cannon, just like the ones for clearing rioters (or more likely legitimate protests) off the streets. Being in charge of one of those when the pressure mounts and the water hisses through a ton at a time gives quite a buzz. We all thought it was for putting out fires, but the fireman training us said its main use was to put up a curtain of spray to protect the crew. So we practiced laying curtains. From a distance, it just looks like a lot of water, a gigantic horizontal shower, but when you are behind it you can see fantastic floral patterns in the spray, along with wonderful sparkle effects from the sunshine diffused through the myriad droplets.

Then came the ordinary, hand-held firehoses with sophisticated nozzle controls for spray shape and number of litres per minute (think in the hundreds, and calculate the weight in kilos). Now I understand why you don't operate one of these on your own. The recoil is tremendous, and having a second, and even a third person, to keep you stable and absorb the kick is no luxury. We were all a bit tempted to souse the expensively tap-water washed yachts in the harbour with grimy, rubbish strewn, oil-contaminated seawater, but for some reason, never explained, we were told not to. Still, laying down a murderous anti-seagull barrage was a good consolation: they didn't like it a bit. We are not very fond of seagulls...

Finally, we profited from water-pressure six times more than a carwash high-pressure hose to blast all the caked seagull dung off the deck. The water turned red as all the fish guts imprisoned in the guano were suddenly liberated. The smell was indescribable but the boat looked a lot better for it.