La Croissance
Outside our house but on our land is an enormous chestnut
tree which in the past has been severely pollarded just like those strangely
stunted and lumpy trees which, shorn and bald, form part of the winter’s
municipal street furniture in most French towns. However our tree had grown wildly since it
was last cut back. Not only is the tree very tall but it also is on a very
steep slope so I quickly gave up any idea of climbing up the tree myself to
prune it. Enquiries revealed that a Monsieur Gay (yes really, and the only one in
the village) would be able to prune it. This necessitated a phone call to
Monsieur Gay and again a visit to the dictionary in advance to look up the word
to prune emarder as I didn’t want him
to get the impression that he should cut the tree down.
There was a certain delicacy in the phone call as
he was a neighbour i.e. he lived in the next
house down the lane so there was even more embarrassment than usual
about my French. Before I get comments that if you live in France you should
learn the language I should add that I have learnt it and my French is quite
passable but I still have to work up to some phone calls. Whilst phoning a
tradesman who is a stranger is one thing phoning a tradesman who is also a
neighbour is quite another. At the time
I had already been a topic of conversation in the village for some days
probably something to do with my launching my car off another neighbour’s
hillside drive and over a bank in the snow with the car ending up balanced a
bit like the coach in the Italian Job. So I didn’t want the village to ring
with mocking laughter or sniggers (ricanement)
at my French as well as at my driving.
I took a deep breath and made the phone call and
fortunately was understood and then another ritual of French life came into
play which involves not hurrying over anything. Monsieur Gay agreed to give me
an estimate or devis which as he has
always cut the tree and he drives past it every day and it is only a couple of
hundred yards from his house should not have been an involved process. Two
weeks went by and then just as I was thinking I would have to phone him again
he strolled up the lane and surveyed the tree from all sides with his hands on
his hips. Then after one minute he knocked on the door and gave us a price
which was about half of what it would have cost in England. He left the time
for the work to be done as unspecified i.e. la
semaine prochaine. I have learnt from experience that French workmen never
specify which year they will start work so I was extremely surprised when he
turned up and it was in fact a week
after he gave the devis. He started work in the most
glorious weather in March.
If you own a chainsaw tronconneuse
( I love that word so I had to put it in ) you will be familiar with the
handbook safety warnings and the diagram of a man working up a ladder using the
chainsaw above his head firmly crossed through with a big black X. MUCH TOO
DANGEROUS! Monsieur Gay had plainly not
read any safety information as he balanced and stretched at the top of a ladder
chain sawing away above his head as you can see in the picture. The prunings then crashed thirty or more feet
to the ground sometimes bouncing off his ladder. I couldn’t actually bear to
watch head on I had to sort of sideways glance when I passed the window as it
looked so risky. The regrowth looked big
when it was on the tree but when they plunged down onto the ground the prunings
were even bigger. Four lorry loads of
branches later and after one and half day’s hard work he has finished.
I wanted to
know if that was only one year’s growth or more so that was why I needed the
word la croissance. I was reassured
when he said it was three or four years and we agreed that the tree needed to
be pruned at least every two years. The previous owners of our house had been
elderly and ill so towards the end they couldn’t help but let some things
slide. The tree had been one of them.
Then I began to worry had the pruning been too
severe, was the pruning too late, was the weather in March too dry, would the
tree ever recover? Perhaps this is a metaphor for what keeps the British
Chancellor awake at night or perhaps he sleeps soundly who knows. I needn’t
have worried the first shoots started to come through ahead even of the trees
in the middle of our nearby town. Now they are sprouting everywhere. But no
green shoots of recovery in Britain it seems with the recession even deeper
than the earlier figures suggested. Perhaps the Chancellor should look again at his economic pruning technique.
