The Old Bordenian Association

After a career in teaching and a long flirtation with the French way of life through a house in the Perigord, Edwin Westacott (Borden 1940-45), together with his wife, Jan, went to live permanently in 2004 in a small village named Pointis-Inard, deep in the South of France not far from the Spanish border.  Readers of The Maroon will be familiar with a number of articles which he contributed over the years, and which were memorable not only for their content but for their style.  They were full of self-deprecating humour and keen observation.

Over the past two years or so, he and Graham Barnes have exchanged sporadic emails – usually commenting on all the trivial things which now fill their lives.  Graham thinks that Edwin’s stories and anecdotes deserve a much wider audience and has persuaded Edwin, very reluctantly, to agree to the publication on the Website of a few of the choicest examples.  They are not only very funny but detail experiences with which many of us can identify, despite not living in France.

It is our intention to publish a couple of these analecta, grouped under broad headings.  Here is the first of them :

Visiting the dentist

Probably the most exciting episode in the past few weeks has been a visit to my dentist, carrying in a small container the fragments of a broken tooth.  I must explain that my dentist and her dental nurse are both exquisitely beautiful with long black hair and deep brown eyes which regard me with obvious sympathy over the tops of their surgical yashmaks.  They have now constructed for me a porcelain tooth, and, after the dentist had fitted it, she told me that she had made it so that it fitted in line with its neighbours rather than cowering out of sight and going black.  “It will make your smile ‘beaucoup plus harmonieux,’” she explained.  I can’t bear to pass a mirror now without smiling at myself and thinking how harmonious I look.  Or did she mean that I have a smile like a harmonica?  Whatever, it’s an improvement on the comment made by an Australian dentist in Braintree when I first opened my mouth to reveal to him the wonders that lay within.  He stepped back aghast and said, “My God!  I’ve never seen a bite like that before, not in the whole of my life!!”

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(Written 15 months ago). It’s been time for my six-monthly dental check.  We’ve been moved on from the Head of Practice to his newest recruit, just out of dental school, who has in fact been doing fillings for me for about six months.  She’s a dear little soul – huge brown eyes and a deeply concerned expression.  She looks about fourteen and I wonder whether she shouldn’t really be at school instead of grinding away at my yellowing molars, clinging for dear life to their receding gums.  Anyway, the debate for the past six months has been whether or not I should have the nerve removed from one of them.  She says that I should keep it.  Under her gaze, I agree until, in the middle of the night, the tooth starts to extract revenge for all the years of mistreatment.  Then I’m off next day, whining and snivelling at the surgery for an immediate appointment.  She tells me again that I really should endure the agony, even if it only gives the tooth another six months.  And I, overwhelmed by her sincerity, go away yet again.  The time before last, she told me that she knew that it was very painful but was convinced that the Head of Practice would be very pleased with my powers of endurance.  So last time, when we had gone through the same debate, I asked her very seriously if she had mentioned to her boss my great courage in following her advice.  “Oh yes,” she said, very solemnly, “I told him how brave you were”, and I suffer qualms of guilt because she doesn’t realise that I’m indulging in what the French refer to as “L’humeur anglaise”, and her boss must think I’m a raving idiot.  Unless – and this has only just occurred to me – she is out-humeur-anglaising me.  Could this be?

Local events and customs

The Pointis Inard Old Folks’ Party took place yesterday.  We arrived somewhat late, so were unable to sit with the usual people, but found places with a very old lady and a Tunisian woman, both of whom proved to be very interesting company.  The dentures of the old lady needed some adjustment, and this, combined with a liking for crisps, resulted in my ending the meal with my left side lightly pebble-dashed.  She has lived in the Village since 1940 and was a marvellous source of information.  “That’s so-and-so’s new concubine, the dark one on his right.”  “I thought he was married.”  “No, divorced.”  “But I saw him with a blonde lady last summer.” “That was number two after the divorce.”  “This is his third, isn’t it?”  “No,” said the Tunisian lady, and counted on her fingers.  “This is the fourth.”  They seemed an unlikely couple, but were obviously the closest of friends.

And so it went on all afternoon.  There were only four of us at the table, so we were able to share two bottles of wine and a bottle of champagne.  Jan and the Tunisian lady don’t drink wine, so the old lady took on the rose while I took care of the red.  “Les Faintaisistes” interrupted our conversation with a little light patter and a song or two.  They were awful.  They don’t know this but they start with a distinct advantage when I’m in the audience.  I am ready and willing to be entertained ; tears are building up to stream down my cheeks as soon as they start, even though I don’t understand more than a third – a third!!! – of what they are saying, especially when they get on to local allusions.  Fortunately there was a wag in the audience and he kept them moving.

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This morning, I had to go into our local pharmacy, and was given my Christmas gift, a long square package, probably about a foot in length.  “It’s a suppository,” said the lady.  “Is it ?” I said.  “I always have job swallowing them.”  “Oh, you don’t ….. Well, it isn’t actually a suppository.”

Local expeditions

We took a trip into Spain the other day where normally it is several degrees warmer than at home – forty-five minutes away – but not this time.  No longer the bobble-brimmed sombrero that I normally affect, but good, solid Marks and Sparks wool.  We had our lunch at the little restaurant where we usually go and this justified the trip.  And, of course, fuel is cheaper than in France, and this time, having filled the tank, I reckon I saved us a good eighty centimes in all.  Not to be dismissed when the Pound is nosediving against the Euro.  It used to be a saving of 14 centimes per litre, but not any more.  Mind you, I always leave the cost of getting there out of the equation.

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Two of our neighbours invited us to join them on an expedition to the nearby Pic du Bigorre where they assured us we would enjoy sights of unrivalled splendour and drink in air as heady as the finest wine.  Boots tightly laced, crampons jingling and our ice-axes lashed tightly to our belts, we went to the little spa town where our neighbour’s wife was enjoying a fortnight of massage, sulphur baths and mud treatment – all on the French version of the National Health!  From there to La Mongie where we looked upwards at the peak that we were about to conquer, checked our equipment and stepped into the cable car which was crammed with hundreds of small children all contributing to the rich soup of germs that enveloped us.  It’s not easy holding one’s breath for twenty-five minutes in an ascending cable car.  At the top – or ‘summit’ as we like to call it – we looked out over the sharp outlines of mountain peaks for all of two minutes before we were overwhelmed by thick fog.  Believe me, ‘impenetrable’ just about begins to describe it.  We could have walked down on it.

Our neighbours took this to be entirely their fault and began to apologise for the disappointing climax to our journey and went on apologising until we came down.  They suggested that we might go into the display rooms and read about what we might have seen had the mists not come ; then, by the time we came out, everything would be clear.  There was an excellent film describing the building of the observatory, they assured us, so we went along to the cinema which had already been overrun by the school children from the cable car.  They were tiny.  Probably about eight or nine and all totally exhausted ; every one of them was slumped in a chair, sound asleep and snoring gently, jam sandwiches clamped in their tiny fists.

After the films, we went to the restaurant.  The mist was even thicker, so we decided we would go down, Jan and I back to Pointis Inard and the neighbours to the thermal baths to be wrapped once again in mud and clingfilm.  Their apologies followed us down the mountain road, but I have to say I quite enjoyed our outing, even the mountain road which was narrow, twisting and almost vertical.  I’m all right.  We still have an English car so I’m on the inside, but Jan sits on the left-hand side with no wheel to cling to and cursing the day she agreed to come on this terrifying journey.

Edwin Westacott