How toads saved the bubbly

Champagne-Ardenne is famous throughout the world as France's number one producer of alfalfa. Alfalfa is widely held to be a galactagogue (a substance that promotes lactation.) It is also known to reduce fertility in sheep. Some ewes have been known to take advantage of this, resulting in greater promiscuity and a general lowering of moral standards in the sheep population. Frequently though, the alfalfa also makes them lactate furiously, thereby limiting their scope for recreational sex. Alfalfa also features in Joseph Heller's novel 'Catch 22'. Major Major's father receives a government subsidy for every strip of land he doesn't grow alfalfa on. He uses the subsidy to buy more land not to grow alfalfa on.

The production of sparkling wine in Champagne nearly ended 100 years ago, when the phylloxera louse developed a taste for the local vines. The louse is a native of North America, and it's thought the original mating pair were from Maryland and may have been honeymooning in Europe when they discovered Champagne's vines and decided to settle. Phylloxera belong to the suborder Sternorrhyncha, which means their mouthparts are towards the back of the head. This enables them to binge-eat without anyone noticing. They are also sexually dimorphic, which just means that the males are different from the females. Well duh. An extreme example of sexual dimorphism is the Osedax worm. The females live off the bones of dead whales, while the males live inside the females and don't develop past the larval stage, except to produce vast amounts of sperm. They also spend most of the day in their room playing loud music. With Bonellia viridis, by contrast, the female swallows the males, who then live inside her genital sac. But I digress. Champagne's grape-growers reacted swiftly to the crisis and buried a toad under each vine. Phylloxera are notoriously squeamish about toads.

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The joys of hospitality

Another cautionary cartoon from  La Résidence's favourite cartoonist Perry Taylor 

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Popes and poisoned gloves

Just down the Loire at Blois there's a château. Can't miss it. Huge place. Be sure to visit the "Chamber of Secrets", a panelled room full of hidden cupboards, where, it is said, Catherine de Medici kept her poison (Norman contests this, and says it's far more likely she kept her moisturiser and rollers in there, but then he would. I'm going with the poisons theory). Why would she want poisons? Well, she'd fixed it for her daughter to marry Henry of Navarre, and invited Henry's mum to stay at Blois before the wedding. Within days of her arrival, Henry's mum died suddenly in mysterious circumstances. Catherine's enemies accused her of murdering Henry's mum with A PAIR OF POISONED GLOVES. As a murder weapon, this seems about as likely as a pair of semi-automatic trousers, but there you go.

Catherine's marriage had not been a happy one. On her wedding night, her father-in-law stayed in the marital bedroom to make sure they consummated the marriage. Thanks Dad. The next morning, when the newlyweds were rather hoping for a lie-in, the Pope popped in to wish them all the best. Her husband soon took a mistress, and was frequently seen leading council meetings lying in his mistress' lap, playing the guitar and fondling her breasts. How very different from our own Prime Minister's Question Time.


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Joan's bones and the Centre region

Ok first off, Centre isn't in the centre of France, it's more like middle-and-up-a-bit-and-left-a-bit. Secondly, it's probably the least poetic bit of administrative naming in the history of administrative naming. The locals aren't too chuffed about this, especially since Centre contains the majestic Loire valley with the finest collection of renaissance châteaux etc etc. Recently they discovered that the bureaucrat responsible for the renaming of their region is a town planner called Norman. They were led to Norman by his earlier, unsuccessful suggestion that the Côte d'Azur be renamed The Seaside. (See our Provence blog). I wouldn't like to be in Norman's shoes.

Orléans is the capital of Centre and gets its name from the Roman Emperor Aurelian (214-275.) Aurelian rose to power through his military exploits, and his imperial motto was "Harmony between Soldiers." He was assassinated by the Praetorian Guard. Orléans was overrun in 408 by Vandals and Alans. Them again. The Alans' legacy lives on in place-names like Allaines and Allainville. See our  Rhône-Alpes blog for more tales of the Alans' escapades in fifth-century France.

'Maid of Orléans' was of course the nickname bestowed on Joan of Arc when she lifted the siege there in 1429 and defeated the "feelthy Eenglish." Poor Joan was condemned to death in 1448 - in an ecclesiastical trial which even contemporary commentators described as "well dodgy." Twenty-four years later, the Vatican overruled the original court judgement and declared her innocent. A bit bloody late. Four hundred years later, in 1868, a Paris pharmacist found an old jar of charred bones labelled "Joan of Arc's bones, honest." "Joan's bones" were venerated for a century before carbon-dating revealed that they actually belonged to a sixth-century BC Egyptian mummy.

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Instructions for French country dancing

All you'll need to know to join in at your local French hop...


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The Rude Museum

 Also born in Dijon was the sculptor François Rude, creator of "Napoleon Awakening to Immortality", "Neapolitain Fisher Boy Playing with a Tortoise" and "Mercury fastening his Sandals". Rude, the Tracy Emin of Trouville, sadly died in 1855 before he could finish either "Immortal Napoleon Realising He's Left His Wallet Behind" or "Same Neapolitain Fisher Boy Discovering that Tortoises are Really Boring During the Winter Months". No trip to Dijon is complete without a visit to the The Rude Museum.

Burgundy wines have been described as "varied", "complex", "human" (?) and "sophisticatedly homely" (like Armani dishcloths or Rolls-Royce slippers). You should, however, beware spending more than half the value of your house on a bottle of Bourgogne Grand Cru. The most expensive Burgundy wines have also been described as "Veblen goods" after the Norwegian economist Thorstein Veblen. Veblen identified the phenomenon of "status symbol" goods and pointed out that a nice pair of £9.99 slippers from BHS will keep your feet just as warm.

Auxerre is home to Chablis Grand Cru ©, a bottle of which will set you back about £50. (Somerfield, by comparison, do a very nice Frascati for £3.29, which will get you just as drunk). Auxerre is twinned with Redditch. In 1995 Auxerre was named "Town of Art and History", whilst in 2007 Redditch was named "Town of Jacqui Smith". Auxerre is also famous for a bishop and an actress. Bishop Helladius, no slouch with a pair of scissors, performed the first recorded tonsure on St Amator, creating the classic "monk look" which remains popular today. Amongst monks. Auxerre-born Carol Ficatier, meanwhile, was Playboy's Playmate of the Month in December 1985.

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Burgundy and Boeuf Bourguignon

Dijon is to mustard what Wellington is to boots. And tough-as-old boots is what the beef was like that went into the first Boeuf Bourguignon. Faced with an inedible lump of 95% beef gristle, an enterprising Burgundy chef decided to cook it very slowly in red wine until it was really sorry. After 3 days in the pot, the lump of gristle relented. This contingency recipe for intractable steak was adopted and made famous by France's celebrity chef, the Delia of Dijon, Auguste Escoffier. Escoffier, the Nigella of Nîmes (I could go on), also created the Peach Melba in honour of the Australian soprano Dame Nellie Peach. Escoffier's last job was at the London Carlton, where one of his pastry students was the future Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh (the Sophie Grigson of Saigon).

Which bring us on to Gustave Eiffel, who built the General Post Office in Ho Chi Minh City. Gustave was born in Dijon. His family name was not originally Eiffel, but one of Gustave's ancestors changed it to Eiffel because he was fed up with the French mispronouncing his real name - Bönickhausen. Inseparable from his Meccano from an early age, Gustave went on to build a tower in Paris, the railway station in Santiago and the gas works in La Paz, Bolivia. He also provided the internal structure for New York's Statue of Liberty. You can read about the oedipal inspiration behind the Statue of Liberty in our Alsace blog.

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C'est par là...

Another lovely cartoon by La Résidence's favourite cartoonist Perry Taylor 

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Mermaids and Mary Whitehouse

Unless you're VERY lucky on your trip to Brittany, you're unlikely to see the legendary city of Ys. King Gradlon was persuaded to build a city below sea-level by his spoilt and precocious daughter Dahut. The magnificent city of Ys soon became Brittany's Party Central, and local Saint Winwaloe (Legendary Brittany's Mary Whitehouse) led a moral crusade against the naughty goings-on there. A mysterious Red Knight turned up to one of the all-night mead binges, and before long, he and Dahut had paired off. Somehow (it must have been the mead) he persuaded Dahut to steal the city keys from her father and go for a midnight ride. Unfortunately it was high tide. And the Red Knight was the Devil. He rode off, laughing, the city of Ys disappeared beneath the waves and Dahut either drowned or became a mermaid.

More modern maritime misdoings took place in St Malo in the 17th century. The Corsairs based there were given Royal Permission to take to the Channel and attack and plunder British ships. The route is now served by Brittany Ferries, whose rates are reasonable by comparison.


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Tall tales

Brittany is the land of legends. In fact Brittany has more legends per head of the population than any other region of France. This is probably the fault of the Cornish Bretons, who settled there in vast numbers in the fifth century, bringing with them some clotted cream, some pasties, an impenetrable language and a line in very tall tales. By the time they arrived, the clotted cream and pasties had gone off so they threw them overboard. The language however survives in trips-off-the-tongue place names like Le Relecq-Kerhoun, and you can't drive more than a few kilometres without running into a Tall Tale.

Carnac is a notorious Tall Tale blackspot. There are more than 3,000 neolithic standing stones in and around the village. No-one knows who put them there, or why. Here are some suggestions: 

#1 They are pagan soldiers who were turned to stone by Pope Cornelius because they were chasing him. (That was when Popes WERE Popes.)
#2 They are Roman soldiers who were turned to stone by Merlin because they were chasing him. (Merlinists point out that the stones must have been Romans because they are standing in straight lines.) 

#3 The druids held raves there.
#4 They are an accurate map of the Andromeda Nebula, and may have been put there by aliens as a sort of driving-school test-course. 

#5 They point to the sunset at solstices and were put there to attract New Age hippies.
#6 They're a neolithic earthquake-early-warning-system, because the stones resting on the top of the dolmens (stone tables) would wobble with seismic activity.

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A Frenchman's home is his castle...

The great Jacques Tati in "Mon Oncle" (1958)

Volcanoes and biscuits

The noxious volcanic waste which fell on the Auvergne all those years ago now provides the allegedly beneficial trace elements in Volvic mineral water. Volvic also produces a range of fruit drinks called Touch of Fruit. (In the USA the name was changed to Volvic Natural. I wonder why.) Volvic is now owned by food giant Danone, most famous for the probiotic Über-yoghurt Actimel. Apparently, probiotic bacterial cultures can assist the body's naturally occurring gut flora, strengthen the immune system and even combat excessive alcohol intake. Surely worth a try. In 1987, Danone acquired European biscuit manufacturer Général Biscuit, not to be confused with the architect of Italian unification General Garibaldi.

The ancient province of Bourbonnais gave its name to the House of Bourbon, which was undisputed market leader in the supply of quality French kings from 1589-1848. The first to "grow" the Bourbon brand was Henry IV, whose stated ambition was that every one of his subjects should have a chicken in his pot on Sundays. No mention was made of stuffing. Or the remaining days of the week. The House of Bourbon also gave its name to the Bourbon Biscuit, which was invented in 1910 in Bermondsey by Peek and Freans, who had previously invented the Garibaldi Biscuit (see above. On second thoughts, don't). Peek and Freans are now owned by Nabisco, whose European biscuit operations were acquired in 1989 by lactobacillus leviathan and Volvic parent, Danone. There. I knew it would all tie up.


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The Auvergne, and why the Romans were worth it

The Auvergne is in the lower middle bit of France, where in 52 BC, the advancing Romans ran into Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls at the Battle of Gergovia. The Romans were soundly thrashed and were sent to bed without any tea. Retreating to the river Allier, they noticed the water's beneficial effect on tired, aching legionnaire limbs. They immediately downed spears and built Vichy as a spa town and health resort, thereby adding the leisure industry to their already impressive portfolio of ruthless colonialism and military innovation. Vichy is now home to the laboratories of beauty behemoth and skincare juggernaut L’Oréal. L’Oréal's famous slogan "Because I’m worth it" was changed recently to "Because you're worth it". L’Oréal's net annual revenue is about £12 billion, so they probably are worth it.

The Puy-de-Dôme department is named after the enormous and hopefully extinct volcano that dominates the landscape. In about 5760 BC, just after tea-time, the top of the volcano exploded, spewing a torrent of noxious waste over the surrounding area. Now a TV transmitter stands on the summit, broadcasting a mixed schedule of lifestyle programmes, chat shows and reality tv. The Tour de France frequently takes in the Puy-de-Dôme. If you yourself should wish to pedal up a very steep volcano in extreme heat, you can do so, but only on Sundays and Wednesdays 7-9am between 1st May and 30th September.

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