July 12, 2015
After much thought, I now realize I have to park the car outside, the risk of having the car vandalized again be damned.
The scratches on the car have been minimized by the generous application of scratch remover paste and I can almost convince myself that the scratches are barely noticeable. Anyway, the insurance declaration from the Mairie notes scratches on the side of the car that were there before those I added, so I am probably covered for the damage.
However, last night, working again and again at trying to ease the car into the garage correctly, I heard the car touch one of the folding garage doors. These operate like shutters with several panels and fold back to reveal the garage. They are nice and new, thanks to the former owners.
Once I had parked the car, at last, I realized that it would take little for me to damage my garage doors. That is uncovered damage, and knowing the way things are done in the Midi, it would take months to repair or, more likely, replace them, whatever the cost.
The cost-benefit analysis is clear. If my car is vandalized, the damage is covered by the insurance.; if I damage my garage door, I'm stuck with the cost of repair.
Now that I have made the acquaintance of the Citroen garage and dealership in the village, if the car is again damaged, I can plead to use them instead of the garage in Trebes that did a half-job.
I will not have my own parking space and have to search for parking, but even if I have to park in the parking lot in the center of the village it will be a lot easier than trying to angle the car into my garage.
There is also another reason I want to go back to parking the car outside:
In my ham-handed parking attempts, I believe I have knocked down an iron stake attached to a chicken wire fence my neighbors down the road put in place to delimit the easement behind my house and their property. Two young men who use the easement to get to their chicken coop and cottage gardens also drive past the chicken wire fence, but they are experienced at getting in and out of the space. I certainly don't think they knocked the post and chicken wire down.
Living in a village means working out good relations with the neighbors. Just as I don't want my next door neighbors unhappy because Beau barks or howls when let alone too long, I don't want my elderly neighbors down the road unhappy I knocked down a boundary fence next to the easement they gave.
While in a big city like New York, there's an unspoken rule that if you have bad neighbors you ignore them or move away, in a village you don't have the option. In New York, you "grin and bear", the neighbors next door who fight periodically, so loudly you can hear it through the concrete walls; you try to ignore the neighbor on the other side of the apartment who shouts so loudly you know when he is intimate with his partner.
In the countryside, silence is golden, especially on Sundays. If I am to go to weekly Mass, that means I have two options: On Sunday, I can take Beau to Notre Dame du Cros for the 6:00 p.m. Mass and sit outside the church door, tying him up briefly when I go inside to take Communion. That is one solution, but it means that parishioners may be disturbed when Beau barks at being tied up while I am inside the chapel. (And parishioners will complain if this is my regular practice.) Or, 2. I can leave Beau at home late Saturday afternoon and go to Mass at one of the churches in Carcassonne.
That was what I did yesterday. I was rewarded by hearing Mass in a Gothic church that dates to 1247 and hearing a magnificent organ with 57-bell carillon. As a result, today I will keep my neighbors happy, at least until the late afternoon. (Incidentally, in New York, Beau has no problem being alone. It is not unusual for dogs to display different behaviors in different locations.)
By 4:30 p.m. I will be on the road, heading for Saint Nazaire, in La Cite in Carcassonne. There is a free organ concert there at 6:00 p.m. This will also be an opportunity to leave Beau alone for three hours, which is a practice to which I am slowly accustoming him. I will be back by 7:30 p.m., early enough that even if Beau barks or cries, the neighbors cannot complain too much, if at all.
After all, many people have dogs here. They are almost all barkers --even teeth-baring snarlers-- and people like them that way. For example, Yves, a Belgian man with a sweet Belgian shepherd bitch called "Pippa" (and one of Beau's girlfriends), is unhappy she doesn't bark. He wants a dog that will drive away burglars.
Most people live in detached houses with land around them, so if the dog barks, the neighbors will hear it, but perhaps not so much as my next door neighbors. "You cannot imagine how thin the walls are", Elodie tells me constantly. When she suggested that I might buy a citronella collar to deter Beau from barking, I quickly told her I would do so. You have to keep the neighbors happy, or risk having your name blackened throughout the village.
Anyone considering a move to a Midi village had best keep that in mind. If you think I'm exaggerating, I'll the true story --told me by a London barrister friend with a friend with a house in the South of France.
The house-owning friend had lived in the village for a number of years on what she thought were good terms, but something she did changed all that. As a result the cordiality she had come to expect in her daily rounds through the village disappeared. The situation deteriorated to the point where she ultimately picked up sticks, sold the house and moved back to England.
There was nothing she could point to that changed the attitude of the villagers towards her my friend told me. Her lack of perceptiveness proved fatal to her plans to retire in the Midi.
***
Postscript
Fate hands me a break a few minutes ago, when I went outside to try to repair the boundary fence.
As I struggle to drive the iron boundary post back into the ground with one hand and de-compress the chicken wire my car flattened with the other, out of his house comes Mr. Gimenez, the neighbor down the road, accompanied by his daughter, whose car is parked in front of his house.
I call out to them, "I'm trying to straighten out your "gate" --I don't know the word in French for this, French isn't my first language--"
Mr. Gimenez and his daughter walk over to where I am standing and his daughter says, "That's nice of you!" Her father says, "Oh, it's not serious, don't worry about it!"
He picks up the downed stake, and unable to ground it, lies it on its side next to the chicken wire, which I have managed to unfold. "It's not a problem", he says, smiling.
"Well, have a good Sunday!" I say, shaking his hand and his daughters in turn, they wishing me the same.
The neighbors down the road are happy. One pair of neighbors down, one pair to go.
Post-Postscript
However, my next door neighbors are still unhappy with Beau.
I learned this a few minutes ago in leaving a note that I would be out for 3 hours late this afternoon at their door. Samir, the partner of Elodie, opened the door and read my note while I stood there.
"Things are better, but I still heard him this week at 7:30 a.m. when I was trying to sleep. Elodie is on vacation and so is Nowan [their son]. Hopefully the citronella collar will take care of the problem.
"What I think you should do is leave him with someone, because you have no life if you cannot go to Mass and you cannot go cycling because he will bark.
"The problem is that you are here in the summer and the summer is when we are on vacation.
"When I'm awakened at 7:30 a.m., I'm in a bad mood for the whole day. We've been nice about all this, other families would not have been.
"The problem is that you are here during the vacation period, which is when we are on vacation. The best thing is for you to pay someone so keep Beau for you."
When I bought the house, the house now owned by Samir and Elodie had stood empty for a long time. And I did not have Beau, whom I am certainly not going to give up.
As must be obvious, if I don't bend to my neighbors' will, they will continue to complain.
So, just as I thought I had found a solution to two problems (the car, leaving Beau alone during the day), I realize I have not dealt with my next-door neighbors' desire to sleep late.
I thought that during the week, leaving for a bicycle ride would not be a problem because Elodie works, and Samir works off and on.
"'Yes', it's better now, especially on Sundays," Samir tells me.
"Well, I put my ear to the door when I leave to be sure he is not barking, and when I return, I put my ear to the door for the same reason" I rejoin. "I know he's not barking."
"He barks in episodes", returns Samir. "He stops for a while, then he starts again."
Perhaps the title of this post should be, "The Impossibility Of Keeping The Neighbors Happy"!
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