Teaching in France — 2013/14, Part 7

The End of my time in France

You know what? I’ve had a great time and I’m sad that it’s come to an end. During my time in France, I’ve done intensely normal things. I’ve started the notion of fun from scratch in an effort to allow my area to tune new activities and interests. Living alone for the best part of eight months has served me invaluably. I’ve rejoiced in the cycle of banal living. Cleaning my apartment was neither a chore nor a therapy once incorporated into routine and teaching wasn’t much of a task once enthusiasm generated itself freely within the classroom. Once I’d accumulated enough contacts on my pay-as-you-go mobile, even socialising developed from the desperate plea for a spare invitation/ bed on an unknown Facebook group to the autonomous power of arranging meet-ups. I can lay claim to having enough friends in the bosomed villages, the functional towns and the unsightly cities of my region to occupy the weekly periods- always leaving the Sabbath Sunday to rest on. Accordingly, I haven’t felt much desire in the recent months to leave my region. It has provided everything in the way of friendships and amusement. The volcanic Puy-de-Dôme department (Clermont-Ferrand) contains my four great friends of mine who remain four of the best I have ever met. Kevin was brought up on a Native American reserve and now lives in Seattle who extols the city’s virtues. He’s ace. Aaron is a Minnesotan lucid dreamer who speaks rationally during the day but at night dreams of an enlarged arachnid version of himself ripping the limbs off ant-sized enemies. Laird is an Oklahoma drifter of the Woody Guthrie mould (though he doesn’t know who that is), and is someone who “takes life as it comes”. He recalls entertaining anecdotes about sharing a dorm with NBA star Blake Griffin at University, who it is said was sometimes employed for his enormous human frame to lift enamoured girls and boys up from the ground floor to the first floor to aid midnight liaisons -liaisons that weren’t permitted when doors were locked and wardens prowled the campus arteries. Mike, a little older than the rest, works for Nasa and took time out of his LA life to gather new experiences. Mike is incredibly intelligent and is the only person I’ve met who can say he has hardware on Mars- having developed the NASA craft’s radar system currently on the Red Planet. When closer to home, I have continued to spend afternoons and weekends messing about alone along the fertile Rhône and have tried to explore every hamlet, town and ruin in the thunderous valleys of the Loire.

(Missing image — ‘A picture of Marrakech from my trip there in March. Lots of things at good prices there, that’s for sure’)

Only twenty minutes from school, still stagnates and will forever stagnate my beloved Saint-Étienne.It was once known for mining coal and manufacturing bicycles. It is now known for nothing, except perhaps for their football team whose remaining task is to not extract minerals but to extract a semblance of pride from their paling city. Les Stéphanois as they are called fulfil this task rather well and have ended the season fourth. Their supporters are indisputably the fiercest, and for a period of 90 minutes every two weeks (when Saint-Étienne play at home), the fans lift the city from drab and ashamed to striving and robust. The power of football…the power of the net, leather and grass…the power of the pig’s bladder…the power of the hay-lain streets of London…the power of everything…the power of Steve Macfadden.

I have learnt to love Saint-Étienne over my time. I strangely brim with joy whenever I hear another French person undermine it. A local of Aix-en-Provence once informed me that it is a largely unknown fact that Saint-Étienne is joint murder capital of France along with Marseille. Largely unknown I assumed because it was largely untrue. In reality, I have never once felt threatened in all my time there. But, I remain happy that Saint-Étienne receives bad press, because a bad name buys Saint-Étienne precious time to remain the same. Alas, how refreshing it has been to walk the dirty streets of Saint-Étienne for 8 months, knowing that no brighter future awaits the city. It is a city where progress might knock at the door, but will be greeted by a pair of bruised testicles. Alas how refreshing it has been to drink at normal prices, knowing that price-hikes are linked to a prospering clientele, from which Saint-Étienne will always be exempt. Alas, how ironically refreshing it has been to know that the self-perpetuating, spider web of shit that is French “big government” will in fact subsidise Saint-Étienne’s existence through social aid and benefits whereas natural selection should mean Saint Étienne fades and dies. The French system will sustain it at a neutral level- for which I will always be grateful. How beautiful it is to have something in this world at neutral. I have cried tears of joy knowing that no town-changing idea will come out of Saint-Étienne that could risk placing it on the map. I say let there remain what is merely necessary for its circa hundred thousand population to continue: four supermarkets, a football club, ten or so bars, four nightclubs, two parks and four streets of commercial shopping. All of these suffice. Saint-Étienne will always be my favourite city in France because I have learnt to define it as a “0 percenter”. It is neutral, auto-functional, and will never be a stepping-stone for something else. Should Steve Jobs have passed it, he might have thought “Hey, Saint-Étienne is almost third-world, let’s bring revolutionary technology here and this city can go places, hopefully at 8% a year” No Steve, let’s not, let Saint-Étienne thrive at 0% growth and exist in sincere staleness, let it to be the most progressive city for that. Progressive for immobile contentment- a rare notion. What a wonderful city it is, and I will miss it. It is a city where I’ve enjoyed many nights in its limited selection of bars and clubs trying to kiss French women- the unkempt, new facial hair allowing me to aim for my ideal age-range of 45–50.

(Chefchaouen- a mountain city painted only in blue as token of respect to Lee Ryan and Duncan James, who are hailed as divinities in Morocco)

Why haven’t I mentioned Monistrol-Sur-Loire? The actual village where I’ve lived for 8 months. Well because I haven’t lived there, and I didn’t fallen in love with it. Rather, I’d fallen in love with that weird ol’ prison-like apartment of mine. The bond I’ve built with that plastic space, in warding off the Spanish assistant, in warding off a German teacher, in warding off the rent-related enquiries of the accountant has meant I did successfully find love in France. Just, I had fallen in love with a non-human, 2 bedroom piece of accommodation. One day, I hope to recreate it in an allotment in East London. Or, I might just move back there after my final year of University as school gardener. I certainly made a good mess of it before its final inspection by the stern deputy-headmaster. I don’t want anyone there. I just want me, with the oven on, cooking stuffed mushrooms, pan-frying fois gras, salt-crusting cod, rapée-ing potatoes and tossing salad. I’ve laid booby traps for the next assistants that might well maim them.

In other news, the dreaded baccalauréat has been upon us for some time. Unsurprisingly, that was a long while ago when I’d first started this final blog. I take comfort knowing that there are a lot of people hindered by the same inability to complete things they start. I once started something which was supposed to be a sincere something for someone but I couldn’t quite manage to finish the first page and have never trusted myself since. I don’t know what drives the pen to scrawl, but for me, it’s the blank ink on the screen, whose colour tone perfectly resembles that of the black tarmac on the A79 between Thiers and Puy-En-Velay, a particularly delightful stretch of tarmac- it has to be said. Anyhow, more than five weeks ago, I invigilated a classroom of students doing their first English exam. Half of these students had the allotted two hours to complete the test and the other half had thirty minutes of extra time. I came in; I ignored the note with this information and let them all do the exam with 30 minutes extra. I can recall some very, very happy faces leaving the room, knowing that they had just gained 30 minutes on all their rivals throughout the country for no other reason apart from this English assistant not reading a note. Unfortunately for the rest of France, inside this classroom also sat Nobel prize-winning student Pierre Farget who laid back smugly in his chair, picking the best from his silver platter of English idioms, wondering how best to utilise language’s potential. The mistake dawned on me that I had mistakenly given this Pierre Farget an extra 30 minutes, someone is the best at English in the Lycée, and probably the region. Other students caught wind of this outrage and rightly complained that it was more or less a joke that non-extra time students had been given another half hour. My defence to the department was simple. This extra half-hour afforded Pierre enough time to write something that would change geopolitics forever. I pleaded with them to summon his paper, see the product of his unnecessary allowance of extra time and tell me whatever he wrote wasn’t worth the mistake. Pierre Farget wrote in 2.5 hours what must be the most important contribution to global thought since Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation. How he cunningly managed to write this in response to the question: “Describe why the environment is important and what you like to do on weekends”- I don’t know. I’ve since had to win over the disgruntled students by falsifying their baccalureate oral scores for the better.

(Missing image — ‘The Loire river’)

What isn’t made-up however is that at dusk one evening, I went to Château Rochebaron. It is a castle, and better still, a 13th century castle. I’ve always liked castles since a young age when my dad walked me around the châteaux of the Dordogne. He would explain their significance as French positions that were designed to both deter and intervene against English knights rampaging through the Aquitaine region during the hundred years war. Some 400 kilometres to the East, the said Chateau Rochebaron crowns a rocky spur and is a thirty-minute walk up from the village Bas-en-Basset. It was closed when I arrived, meaning that it’s cast iron gates were literally shut. The ruins themselves and the surrounding forests were completely deserted. It made for quite a ghostly scene. Determined, I climbed around the ramparts and entered through crumbled gaps in its concentric defences. I took photos with my Erasmus-funded Nikon camera, threw stones at goats on the rocky crops and sat on the castle’s cliff-edge and watched a setting sun. All moments considered, this was one of maybe three times during the year abroad that verged on reality. As I left, it became very dark and I was forced to walk for thirty minutes through the a pitch-black forest back to where I’d parked my car. To most, it would have been comparable to a Blair Witch situation. The twigs were witches’ fingers and the leaves their hair. The trunks swayed like giants and whilst I walked back there were both erratic, panicked rustles to my left and sustained, predatory rustles to my right. A scary scene, without a doubt. I thought however that the fact I had been growing a long and fiery beard, combined with electrocuted, curly locks of brown hair and was heartily singing the song “Down to the river to pray” was probably enough of an infernal/ celestial dichotomy to ward off even the strangest, most sadistic Haute-Loire murderer. I’ve often wondered since that maybe someone did have a think about eating me in that forest that night and maybe they’d decided the meat was already rotten. Maybe they were right.

(Missing image — ‘A sunset over the valley’)

During the final two weeks, I set about saying goodbye to people and tying up loose ends. The teachers threw a going away meal for me, which was great. One asked why I hadn’t turned up on my last day. I told him to shove off. I promised to try and see some of my French friends in the area as soon as I can in the future and I look forward to holding that idea, right up until the time I decide to sack it off. Really, I must see them again, especially my policeman/boxing friend/ horticulturalist Marouane, together with Joe and Adnan from Saint-Étienne (great guys). What an incredible year of getting back to basics in the most unashamedly clichéd way. I’ve felt every moment of it and have never been happier than when going to a downtown bar, sitting next to an interesting guy or gal, chatting to them whilst watching sport or playing them at the dice-game Yams. For me, that’s real, and for me, that’s what it’s all about, passing time in any environment in any given way so long as you’re aware of it. What does that mean? It means everything.

(Missing Image of castle — ‘The ambient blue at Château Rochebaron’)

Alas, it was that I was driving back one very, very, very final night after my very, very, very last boxing session to that place where I live, that nothing-apartment inside that nothing-school complex, located itself on that nothing-promontory above Monistrol. The predictable roll of the rubber was gently lulling me into a stupor and I began to foam at the mouth. Everything was normal, as it always is in that car. Yet something glinted green to the right of the Twingo Mustang, quite far-off. At first it shirked me, it then seduced me and after some pause, I decided to seek its source. I turned off through the metal barrier, leaned quickly out of my window to smash a speeding camera, hopped the ditch, bounced across a ploughed field and approached an orchard that was atop a hillock, from where the light was emitting. I left my car at the mound’s base and walked up.

As I ascended the knoll, the precise green became a vague suggestion of green, blurry and unfiltered. The incline rounded off and I walked into the orchard. What I saw there has stayed with me since. There, sat wedged in the nook of a coppiced tree, strumming the opening to “The Valley” by American Chicano band Los Lobos was Michael Aspel from Antiques Roadshow. “Are you happy?” He asked, raising his expressive eyebrows at me and holding me with his unhappy eyes. I inhaled to make a reply, but he stopped me with another question, “Why did you stop the blog?” I explained that I had adjusted to my life in the Haute-Loire and that the situation had normalised. I asked him rhetorically what value was a blog wherein the writer had exhausted all the pertinence and originality of first-hand impression about his new environment and could only speak amusingly if he lied. What use would that have been? Rural routine and successful regional integration had become the best antidote to any need to be heard. He breathed in, looked across the orchard, nodded and spoke: “Good enough for me, now go join the others.”

“Join the others?” I wondered. A hand grabbed me from behind and led me through a final layer of foliage, back down a path that led to another motorway. Near the motorway, we stopped at a space- I wasn’t sure how to describe its function. On the sign it said “Aire”. Strange, I thought- I’ve pondered this before. The owner of the guiding hand said: “Yes, this is where we are. Your first blog questioned what French motorways’ “aires” do and what they are…I think you now know”.

I woke up, laid a final bamboo spike trap on the toilet for the next assistants, packed my bags, thanked the region for its honesty….and went home…back to it all…back into all of it…back of it all.

(Missing image — ‘A French Aire- the best reflection of everything I became and valued after my year abroad’)