Striking Terror to the Heart

Well, there’s a moving van over the road. This, in itself, is not unusual as the building is a two-family house (much in the fashion of North and South Korea) and the gentle tenants in the South constantly move away to greener, quieter, and less threatening pastures.

Moving vans rattle me. I started moving before I was one year old, and am always hopeful that where I am now is the final destination. When I was two, I accompanied my parents into a freezing Canadian winter. My first clear memory is packing my books into a blue tin pram.

After my father became a foot soldier in the great Canadian Protestant army of the Lord we moved regularly every couple of years. I have changed continents and manses and apartments and houses dozens and dozens of times.

The extra-special Swiss moving trauma has to do with the cleanliness of the rented property that you leave behind. Windows have to be sparkling; the grout between the floor tiles scrubbed with a toothbrush; ceilings and doors washed. You have to boil the bathrooms in bleach. (Warning! An acquaintance did this with a wicked-strong product that took the enamel off the bathtub, and she had to buy a new one.)

Then you have to pass the real-estate agent test where a man with bad hair, bad attitude and a clip-board feels behind the back of taps to make sure there isn’t a bump of lime scale or a flake of soap.

If you fail the test, not only are you hygienically bankrupt, you also lose at least part of your blocked deposit (three months rent) as professional cleaners have to be called in to remove water spots from tiles, dust specks from the corner of drawers, invisible (to the naked eye) fingerprints from door handles. I’ve heard they work with microscopes.

Even if you have been asked to leave (due to a relative needing one of grandpa’s many, many houses) you have to scrub the kitchen raw (even though it is all going to be ripped out and replaced.) It’s more than depressing: it’s traumatic.

The moving van over the road has the English phrase “The Human Touch” written on its side. Due to wear and tear from my vantage point it seems to read “The Lunar Torch” – a much more whimsical and fitting concept.

I recall my old Uncle Harry being traumatised by his one big middle-aged move. He swore he would never ever do it again. He said it took him three weeks to find his tooth brush. His wish came true, and last I heard an urn containing his ashes is still in the back of the upstairs closet.

We are stardust, after all.

Chateau Nights

Well, if you ever get invited to a chateau, be sure to bring a sleeping bag along. Of course, there are drawers full of ancient embroidered linens locked away safely in Louis XVI cabinets, but nobody knows where the keys are anymore. As for the tattered remains of the duvets, they are on the very top floor where the flies and the mice have taken over, and NO ONE goes up there. Ever.

Chateau life is full of pleasant and unusual surprises. When, for example, did you last get your hand kissed coming to the breakfast table? Or blow a French hunting horn in the main hallway? Or see a gentle pastel sunset over endless still water?

My particular chateau is located in the Dombes—a fish-pond-filled plain half way to Lyon from Geneva. Originally purchased by our host’s great-great grandfather (a silk baron), it is perched on a slight rise in the flatness overseeing 1000 hectares (2471 acres) of water, canals and forest. You patrol the paths in a pair of old camouflage-green Citroen beach buggies which have a tendency towards flat tires and gear-box issues.

You note that the ponds are low, and some have even disappeared completely. You observe the egrets and swans and positively hate the big black cormorants that stress the fish in the muddy shallow ponds.

You sleep little as the hunting dogs bark all night.

You visit the Saturday-morning market and want to buy a huge domestic goose and some fluffy hens that are for sale. For lunch you eat frog legs and pike mousse and tartar of carp. Your host tries to sell the restaurant chef the 15 tons of carp that he fishes annually from him ponds. This is beyond embarrassing: it is aristocratic. You give the waitress an outrageous tip.

You visit the great Abbey of Bourg en Bresse and admire the stained glass and the tomb of poor Marguerite of Austria/Savoy. You are enthralled and stuffed (fish dumplings) at the same time.

At apéro hour, the neighbours come to pay a courtesy call. They have rescue horses and dogs, and market-bought poultry, and a flock of guardian geese. They discuss the upcoming hunting season with our chateau host who wears a flak jacket, smokes a pipe, and loves knives. They leave at 9, as they have to dress for dinner.

For our supper there is a huge hunk of chateau Limousin beef resting in the fridge. You compose a magnificent Yorkshire pudding that you have whipped up by hand—a totally English dish perhaps never tasted before in this 13th-centure French demeure.

I loved my three nights at the chateau (yes, a chateau weekend begins on Thursday evening, in case you were not au courant) but it is also quite a relief to be back in my own simple kitchen where there is not one single stuffed boar head on the wall; where the cobwebs are amazingly discreet, and where I keep my compost bins outside.