I once asked my friend if he felt he had integrated into village life. He replied that he had never done anything so dreadful as ‘integrating’. And he was right. You can be at home here but still retain all you want of your own separateness. In the very best of ways no one cares what you did before, whether exalted or otherwise. People will come to know you as you seem, as you are, so the most straightforward thing to do is be yourself. In the early days I think I tried too hard in an ‘English’ way to befriend my neighbours. I always met with politeness but I was probably regarded as too curious. Village people take their time. Once I realised this I relaxed about the whole issue and things have gone very well since! This is a village community that still has a good number of lifelong inhabitants; people born and raised here, still living in the same house that their parents built and spent their lives in. True they may now be completely renovating the property, extending it perhaps but the heart of it remains the same. Many of these families are related to one another, making for complex land ownership. Gabi has spent the last five years converting a house with his daughter, rebuilding much of it. It’s nearing completion now and, just 50 metres from her brother’s will be her home for life. This is wealth. I met a man yesterday who has set himself the task in retirement of building on to the side of his family home, in order to create two very large apartments for sale. So if theirs is the foundation level of the village then the rest of us are all newcomers, from across the valley, from the Ardèche, from Paris, from the Pas de Calais, from wherever and welcome.
I have learned that I make a difference by my presence here. This village is changed by the fact of my living here, making my contribution. This year for instance has been ‘the year of the broken leg’. Everybody knows about it and about what happened to me. A few weeks ago, while I still used the sticks I took the free commune bus down to Moûtiers to attend the hospital. This is the service the elderly ladies take to do their weekly shopping. Every one of them had a piece of advice for me and her own theory concerning why the leg broke again this summer. The general feeling was that I did too much too soon, and anyway, as for entering a skiing race in the first place……! Thus I am largely regarded as ‘une sportive’, which is generally a good thing as at least it means I must be active and get things done. It pleases me enormously to have a neighbour, a regular cyclist, stop and talk ‘biking’ with me simply because he had seen me on my bike up some interesting road far from the village. That, it seems is how to become known; by being and doing. The mechanics of becoming acquainted are interesting because there is a trick in it. There are set steps to follow, with no option to retreat once one has been taken. At first the smile, the wave, the bonjour….then the pause in the car to do the bonjour…..then the hand shake or the ‘bise’ and the bonjour. For a long while I was stuck at level one with a lady who walked her dog. Then we met in the market one day and stopped to speak for a moment. After that it was natural to stop and talk whenever we met. The next step was a drink at her home one hot afternoon. Touché! Well, now we ‘tutoie’ one another, swap sewing stories and ideas and have the makings of a good friendship.
It’s important to do things here and it doesn’t hurt to be seen doing them. I often hear people say that ‘jobs don’t do themselves’ and that ‘nothing gets done if you don’t do it’. There’s a strong sense of self reliance among my neighbours. The best example is my hero ‘Titine, who at ninety still sweeps her own chimney, strims her grass using a professional strimmer, chainsaws her own wood, collects her own apples, maintains a big house and laughs all the time. Some time ago she broke a hip falling from a chair while changing a bulb. A little later she had a second fall but laughed out loud because this time she didn’t break anything! Hahaha! Her husband was the village postman, a man with no aptitude for anything mechanical so she had always made sure she knew how to use and mend everything. This is how I will be. People help one another and have a keen sense of balance in these matters. A small service rendered is never forgotten and will either be reciprocated or you will open the door to find fresh vegetables or fruit on the step. On the other hand no comment will be made if a person flouts a local convention by cleaning something unsuitable in the village ‘bachal’ or trough, or parking in the invalid bay or making a lot of noise on a Sunday. It will just quietly become how that person is known. Some matters do officially reach the mayor’s ears if they have irritated enough people… an abandoned vehicle, a noisy dog, but these are rare instances. Mostly I have observed that the villagers live and let live. Madame le maire is in fact another neighbour, but she would never have acted on her own.
One summer, six years ago I had the idea of offering an ‘apéritif’ on the 15th August for all-comers. It was welcomed, to my delight and relief. Each year since there has been more participation from my neighbours who, this year organised it the day I was in hospital. Though we call this a village there are no local services and no bar. This filled a need. The oldest lady in the village used to come down on the arm of her visiting grandson and sit on a chair for a while. The meeting place in les Chavonnes is the corner for ‘les poubelles’. Everyone passes by sooner or later. It serves as a recycling point too; unwanted items which are still serviceable are left for others to look at. They don’t usually hang around for long. Have a coffee at someone’s house and they will show you their latest bargain, a CD player that just needed a plug. So, somewhere in the village there are strange inhabitants who ‘throw things away and buy new ones’, probably the owners of the new chalets up at the top of the village in the recently built ‘lotissement’. Not ‘our’ way at all.
For a long time, Savoie formed part of Piemonte, a mountainous region extending into northern Italy, the people having more in common with the lifestyle of those other mountain dwellers; they lived and worked at altitude, their famous colporteurs transporting goods over the ‘cols’ in all weathers. A referendum was offered in 1860 and as a result it was decreed that Savoie would become a part of France again, so the border is now a short way down on the Italian side of the mountains. My neighbours are, in many cases, mountain people with grandparents who would have remembered this former life and spoken the local patois. They are also citizens of the wider France connected by TF1 and the other TV channels to the bandwagon which is la Belle France. Not everybody agreed saying that the decision was never ratified and there is still a ‘Savoie Libre’ following, noticeable to tourists as slogans on the road during the Tour de France mountain climbs and more recently as a protest involving putting bags over the radar traps. It’s a good job there is still room for the odd characters who turn up and settle here. Even my car is known, and recognised by the local police for sure, as the right hand drive one with the French plates. I am known in the community and that is a good feeling. In the bar no one is surprised to see me during the ‘intersaison’, that special period known only to locals. I have ‘qualified’ for my resident’s skipass and look forward to one day being invited to the annual senior ‘repas des voisins’. Perhaps I will have earned it just by continuing to live and work here. But I’m in no rush.
* * *
copyright Julia Austen 2015