Lac Mondély, superstar ...

Some eighteen months ago I blogged, in passing really, about our local lake, the Lac de Mondély. Now much as I love it, it's hardly a world class tourist attraction - it's a small, homespun, local lake mainly used by local people and all the better for it. For some reason presumably best known to themselves, my blog article immediately hit Google's first page, where it has resolutely stayed ever since, ahead of all the 'official' tourist sites, and bizarrely nearly half of all the casual visitors to this blog now come as a result of searching for Lac Mondély!

But while that's all very pleasing and flattering and all that, it's hardly superstar status. Last Sunday, however, the UK Sunday Times ran an article entitled The 20 hottest European beaches for 2010. Lac Mondély was - are you ready for this? - placed number two, behind Page Conguel in Brittany and just ahead of Collioure (which is listed as being 'best for highbrow holiday makers', whoever they may be, and actually barely has a beach at all ...). Look, if you're one of the 561 people who've visited this blog in the last three days just to read about Lac Mondély, I need to explain something to you. Mondély is in the Ariège (something that the writer strangely failed to mention). Ariège is in the Pyrénées, which are mountains. It's almost as far south as you can go and still be in France, green, wild, small, sparsely populated, rugged and incredibly beautiful, but it's not The Beach. To get to Mondély you have to schlep along a rutted one track road for half an hour and hope you've still got your exhaust when you get there. Actually, come to think of it you have to do quite a lot of that anywhere in the Ariège.

Don't get me wrong; I'm truly delighted you're all interested in our wonderful département, and if you're moved to come and explore it for yourself so much the better (yes, well, clearly I would say that, wouldn't I ...?). But I'm just having ever-so-slight flashbacks to the days in our small village in north Norfolk when it was just beginning to become a bit Sunday-supplement-ish cool, and when people would stop me as they swayed precariously down our cobbled loke in kitten heels to ask where the town centre was. (Er - you're in it ...).

However. While Lac Mondély is definitely not Europe's hottest beach holiday for 2010 (unless you happen to earn your living writing for the Sunday Times) it's still pretty special. Don't you think?

Exposed beams

We're having a heatwave. It's official. Not quite official enough, here in Ariège, to trigger the government's canicule plan, brought in after nearly 20,000 people died in France during the 2003 heatwave; but official enough to be the ongoing subject of media coverage, not to mention many a conversation. And it is hot; afternoon temperatures are up to at least 36 degrees in the shade, dropping to a more comfortable 26 degrees or so at around 10pm. In the sun? Put it this way - my thermometer goes up to 50 degrees, and it's off the scale. Working is becoming increasingly taxing, and I keep having fantasies of diving into cool water.

So the timing was apt this week when a friend in England sent me the bizarre piece of news that the theme park Alton Towers has banned men from wearing Speedo-type swimming trunks 'on grounds of public decency'. I honestly thought this was a joke at first, but having followed up the links she sent it appears that it isn't: apparently "the style is not deemed public or family friendly" and is likely to "cause embarrassment".

Am I missing something here? Do most people not have bodies, and bits that stick out here and there, and - heaven forfend - body hair? And wasn't the whole Adam and Eve thing a long time ago, and just a fable and/or a lot of tosh (depending on your persuasion) anyway? When, and how, did we learn to be so ashamed and embarrassed about our physical form? Surely to goodness, in the twenty-first century, it's time to move on from the smutty seaside postcard ...

Here in France, if you're male and you want to swim in the vast majority of public pools you have to wear Speedos (and, usually, a swimming hat). No bermudas, no question. It's deemed unhygienic to bathe in a swimming pool in clothes that you could have been (and probably have been) wearing in the street all day. It would, the official line goes, simply turn the pool into a wash house. My friend's Alton Towers story reminded me of a story I read in our regional newspaper, La Dépêche du Midi, a few weeks ago.

Until this year, there have been two public pools in Toulouse which allowed the wearing of bermudas: a small pool, Castex, and the much larger one close by, Nakache. Castex has for some time been a favourite haunt of young people from the quartiers populaires - working class estates - in the area, and has had a reputation for being, shall we say, a bit on the lively side. Tensions between the teenagers and other pool users ran high; two years ago the entire pool area had to be evacuated when a pitched battle broke out between fifty or so teenagers and security guards, and then the police that were called to restore order. That kind of thing.

Clearly Something Had To Be Done. But what? Well, a bit of uncharacteristically creative thinking out of the box obviously took place: a solution has been found, and appears to be working. But it doesn't involve extra policing or heavy-handed rules or showcase arrests. Local officials have simply banned the wearing of bermudas at Castex, while continuing to allow it, by special dispensation, at Nakache.

As if by magic, the yoof has migrated to Nakache, which is much bigger and is a leisure pool as opposed to a swimming pool, as it were, whereas the swimmers have returned to Castex. Hanging out and joshing in a pair of Speedos and a swimming cap is simply not cool; besides, many of the teenagers are of Muslim origin and consider themselves to be too prudish to wear, as La Dépêche puts it, 'le maillot à poutre apparente' (lit: swimming costume with exposed beam' (!). Nakache has reported a high frequentation, good spirits and no problems. Castex swims peacefully. Problem solved.

Chapeau.

Dream on. Or not.

A couple of days ago, one of those glossy English magazines devoted to the idea of moving to France dropped, out of the blue, into my postbox. Never being one to look a gift read in the mouth I flipped idly through it after lunch today. Pretty pictures, the odd interesting article. After a while, though, I began to feel reality slip away from beneath my feet, and I began to wonder whether I and the magazine's publishers inhabit the same reality. A few random quotations:

Try to visit the area you plan to buy in before you buy.

Hmm. Good idea. Wouldn't have thought of that.

It could be useful to pick up a copy of the local newspaper to see what's happening in your chosen area.

Or that.

France isn't being affected by the economic crisis.

Oh really? Try telling that to the people losing their jobs (like some of those in the paper and textile industries here in Ariège, for instance), or to some of the estate agents here that are closing down overnight, or to those desperately trying to get a loan to buy their first house ... France isn't being as badly affected by la crise, because unlike the UK it hasn't based its whole economy on virtual money. But affected it is. According to an opinion poll yesterday, 62% of French people believe the government isn't doing enough to counteract the effects of la crise, and 61% hope that the unions will call on people to repeat last week's action.

There's a strong chance that sterling will surge against the euro and may well hit 1.40 during 2009.

Umm - no comment. 

Get away from it all.

Enticing, to a degree, maybe. And a good reason for taking a holiday, for sure. But moving yourself lock, stock and barrel to France to get away from everything you don't like in the UK? No way. For heaven's sake come here for positive reasons, not negative ones, otherwise in two years time everything will start to look greener back on the other side of the fence again. And be aware that wherever you go, you'll take yourself with you ...

Live the dream.

I came across no less than five instances of this little phrase (actually, there may have been more, but by now I was fast losing the will to live at all, let alone live the dream ...). I have an irrational hatred of this particular expression, and of the concept behind it. It's so - well, fluffy. It implies a move into a society where life is perfect: where the sun always shines, bureaucracy always smiles at you, there's no discrimination, no poverty, no unemployment, no exclusion, no depression, no suicide, no teenage binge drinking ... Let's be clear here. To live in France is to live in the real world, not in a world of perfect fantasy. Yes, I love it here, but it's not (thank goodness) utopia.  

No, I'd be no good at selling glossy magazines.