Hispanic Night at Les Fous – it’s all-change in Happening Plusquellec
Before Brexit, it was routine for expat Brits in France to buy the fixtures and fittings for any new kitchens and bathrooms they had in mind from the UK rather than from local suppliers. B&Q and Homebase were, they claimed, miles cheaper than their French equivalents. The fact that they might have to drive an additional 500 miles and meet the cost of a car and trailer both ways on Brittany Ferries was, literally, a matter of no account.
What really mattered, I soon came to realise, was that, in England, they spoke the language and knew what they were buying. Thus it was that in our house, bought in 1999 for £14,000 from a couple heading home to Devon, we inherited British electrical sockets and sinks with individual hot and cold taps. Even our lightbulbs, it turned out, with bayonet fittings, were British, as was the electric fire that squatted like a toad in a corner of the spare bedroom.
But I shouldn’t mock. When Mark, our go-to electrician – a Brit who came to France 35 years ago and not only speaks the language but, more importantly, understands the system – offered to include a UK socket in our newly-wired living room extension, I said yes. It meant that we could more easily recharge the batteries of the electric bikes we had bought during a visit to Belfast and even plug in, by way of an existing voltage converter, our much-loved Bose radio, brought with us from our old apartment in New York.
That, though, is as far as I was prepared to go. It seems to me that if you live in France you should, as far as possible, do what the French do. When in Rome and all that. When the bulky fireplace in our kitchen is finally demolished next month, giving us 12 square metres of additional space, the planned double sink, work surface, tiles and units – the entire plan de travail cuisinière – will be, if not French-made (which I cannot guarantee), at least obstained from French suppliers. And the same will be true when we get round to purchasing insulation panels to keep us warm next winter. It seems to me that if we are going to recoup “as much as” 70 per cent of the cost of our new insulation from the state, we should at least use locally-sourced materials and labour.
As it happens, Brits are not the only ones to take the contrary view. Bertie, our recently-arrived next-door neighbour, is German and going through his new Breton home like a hot knife through butter. The existing windows, he says, must all be replaced, and a three-man team from Nordrhein-Westfalen, some 500 kilometres away, has been recruited to do the job, plus any other work that occurs during their week-long stay. It is perhaps ironical that Bertie’s windows are not, in fact, German, but Polish – everything in Germany is now made in Poland, he says. What is beyond question is that they are not French. The only thing French about the contract is that the Government in Paris has undertaken to pay 2,500 euros towards the cost.
New neighbours are always a risk. On our leeward side, we have been lucky with Jean-françois and his wife. But on the windward side, looking up the hill, our previous neighbours, a couple from Leeds, were, shall we say, just a tad taciturn. The most I ever got from Bernard in ten years of proximity was a wave from his ride-on as he mowed the grass of a Sunday morning. His wife and I only ever spoke once, and that was when we invited them to a summer party.
Bertie is very different. A former border-guard and customs officer, he loves France and looks to be well settled in Brittany. He and I are already friends. His wife, Miël, is Colombian and reminds me very much of my sister-in-law Maritza, from Cuba. Like Maritza, who now lives in New York, Miël is a born homemaker. She always has a cloth or duster in her hand and loves to cook. She also loves to dance.
Her one problem is language. Bertie is one of those irritating individuals who absorbs languages like a sponge. He speaks English, French and Dutch, as well as German, though, oddly, not Spanish. Miël, however, while able to rattle on in German, has no French and little English. But on successive nights in our local pub, Les Fous, it turned out that two of the locals are near-fluent Spanish-speakers. One had lived in Spain for two-and-a-half years with his Spanish girlfriend; the other, a joiner who two years ago installed caps on our open chimneys, had spent several years in Ecuador. Who knew?
In the meantime, Miël has introduced herself to a woman from Nicaragua, who lives up the road with her Spanish-speaking English husband. And Guillermo, her brother, a jolly fellow with a range of skills, has since turned up, keen to open a restaurant in France. The result of all this is that a hispanic evening of music and dance is now in prospect at the Fous, where up until now only French and English, in addition to Breton, were spoken.
It’s intriguing and entertaining, but also challenging. Louisa is brushing up her Spanish and I am struggling to recover my long-dormant German. But I’m starting to wonder. Do I live in France at all or has the EU come home to roost in Plusquellec?
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