David, here's the report I did on the mines at Locmaria, you might find it useful for your research.
Got it. Nice piece of work, David. I had a consultancy at the mines at Locmaria-Berrien in the 90s, with my mining archaeologist colleague from Alsace. Told the mairie how to save the remains and set up a heritage operation but they didn't have the expertise or the sheer political will to do much about it, so German mineralogists continue turning up to rob the spoil heaps and galleries...
Ever go to the Welshman's pub at Plouyé? Fine place for a pint and craic :)
Just so. The presbytere (which was rebuilt after war damage) is about 100 metres from my house. Sir Mortimer Wheeler visited the village pre war and had lunch with Perrot. Said he was very erudite. Perrot had been banished to Scrignac because he was a bit hot to handle and a fervent Breton independentist. He was not very clever at playing the system and spoke his mind. The communists here are a very dour lot and don't really like strangers from anywhere. Maybe it's changing a bit now, but very slowly. There was a bomb outside our house about 30 years ago which blew up the war memorial as the plaques were only engraved in French. I was warned by our previous mayor not to fly a Breton flag. There is in fact a flagpole outside our house which was once owned by a notaire. It was considered to be a "posh" bourgeois house as it is two storeys and built of dressed stone unlike most here. There are a few mysterious holes in our front wall which look a bit like bullet damage (I have never asked the question)> People just clam up here if you ask about history. If you google history of Scrignac you can find something I wrote!
Was he a member of this priest's collabo outfit, David?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Perrot
http://www.errances.info/post/2012/07/12/Controverse%3A-qui-%C3%A9tait-vraiment-Jean-Marie-Perrot
Ian you are right! Our mayor is communist (doesn't like the English). One of his councillors is a trades uniuon official (spends most of her time organising strikes etc) and when she's not doing that or driving her large Alfa Romeo around she is the fellow bonnet rouge candidate to Troadec the head bonnet rouge, mayor of nearby Carhaix. The communists killed our village priest here in the war; some say he was a collabo- but he certainly was a Breton independist and the communists were very much not. ( I do have a bonnet rouge myself- they were on special in the supermarket!)
Red Bunnet land there, David ! Round here the only thing we get dumped on our roads are Italian artics avoiding paying the Fréjus Tunnel fees :)
Charlie aside we have protests here very regularly. Usually farmers but sometimes in the agroalimentaire. Just last week the farmers dumped 3000 tonnes of shallots on the local expressway. Before Christmas it was cauliflowers. Last summer it was eggs. Frequently we get whole boxes of stuff given to us (wrong size, too many for the supermarkets) by friends near the coast for distribution up here in the hills where we can't grow such things. It's a nice perk.
Sounds like an unruly bunch in your neck of the woods ! We are amuch more docile lot in the Limousin...
Seems a considerate move for an 80 year old to live next door to a funeral parlour, cuts down on the travelling costs for the family later !
Every little helps !
A UK planning officer was murdered a few years ago by a disgruntled applicant who had been refused permission. Our local tax office here in Brittany has been burned down twice and pelted with vegetables of all sorts, eggs, cow dung etc. Hundreds of supermarket trolleys were removed and dumped outside the home of Le Foll the agriculture minister who lives nearby. These civil servants do have the power to ruin the lives of people and there are reactions. I have personally lost tens of thousands of pounds following planning decisions which often followed months of lying by officers.
All for a Homebase garden shed...
Not really but not so far from it. It was over a building built without planning permission and used as a storage site ever since. Neighbours were saying the dispute went back around 30 years.
Part of the council offices roof collapsed and most of the building was destroyed. The neighbour's cottage had an 80-year old woman inside, it was gutted as well, along with a farm building next door. The funeral parlour simply happened to be in the way because it was next to the council.
That was just last Thursday. Given that form, half of French officialdom should have been ashes and rubble long ago ;-)
Blimey, sounds a bit extreme !
Peter, you haven’t been reading the UK papers so perhaps you have not heard of the guy in Oxfordshire who burnt down the offices of South Oxfordshire Council, an undertakers and a neighbour, all because he did not get the planning permission he wanted.
I was on my first trip to Viet Nam, 1990. No mobiles, no internet, even very tenuous connections with the people I was working for. I heard when I was back in Hanoi nearly two weeks after it happened. His big brother (aged 19 at the time) did all of the funeral and cremation stuff and apparently never cried a tear. I got roaring drunk and made a Vietnamese bar owner very happy because I spent a lot of money. I could not scream, as I too would have done, because it is not culturally acceptable but when I told the people in the bar what had happened they all cried with me, literally. I still felt no better.
Peter and Brian I think we have all felt those raw emotions which makes the unnecessary ones even more plain b****y annoying. I was away climbing mountains when my father died unexpectedly (before the days of mobiles or even electricity where I was) so I got back after the funeral and didn't even know about his death until I got home weeks after the event which was quite bizarre, Everybody else had done their grieving- I had to miss out- I just went down to the pub. I remember the moment I walked in- it was like a stranger walking into a saloon. The whole place went deathly quiet. When my wife died here in France I knew the end was very near but I was on the autoroute and picked up my portable, heard the news from her sister and screamed out at the top of my lungs. It's different if your loved ones get hit by somebody else's rocket and the whole of life's possibilities are just snatched away.
I mean it terms of what you see if you work on streets, refugee camps, near wars, children in clinics destroyed by full blown AIDS then all the executions, police shootings, accidental deaths by gunshots, Boko Haram, I could go on and on. Personally I cried bitter tears when 'my' cat was killed at the end of November and still look for him every day and each time I wish to say something to somebody no longer with us. I also had a child die in 1990 when I was half way round the world and could not even get back for his funeral, let alone say any kind of goodbye, 24 years on I am still wanting to say something that can never be heard. So I agree with you with regard to the personal. In the conflicts and misery in this world it is very cheap but to the nearest and dearest of those who die they are usually as precious as those we lose.
Strange thing David, maybe off topic but I likened the 'relief' to seeing the last breath of my wife to the first breaths of my son when he emerged from the womb 26 years before. Both were equally intense moments which emphasised how fragile but meaningful life (and death) really is....
Well said Peter and I know exactly how you must feel having been through that situation. Of life of course it is a precious thing given to all people and it's stretching our importance to accept that any of us has to take somebody else's life away, especially so in the case of women and children.
No Brian, after many years of nursing a very sick wife I can say life is precious to me. It's us who make life cheap by not appreciating exactly what a gift we have been given.
That is it Peter, maybe not all of us wish to die for any cause and to wish to be a martyr seems very strange to me. Life is precious. But we do what we do whatever we do and however that is done. It is just a question, but isn't an imam several thousand kilometres away telling us we must all convert or die who then gets zapped by a drone doing much the same? Each to his or her way, only to prove how cheap life is and little more in many cases.