The Idiot Bastard Sons of Anarchy

The idiot bastard son of anarchy

Jad, Steve and myself get together once a year to brainstorm. We bump into each other more or less every day, but in early October the Idiot Bastard Sons of Anarchy have serious work to do. I have gone AWOL with my new friend Maurad, just back from Morocco. We’re off on our trusty mobylettes to harvest a little C.Sativa L. A stunningly uncomfortable ride over the Maures mountains in the glorious autumn sunshine. At the lofty summit of Notre Dame des Anges we will stop briefly to make sure we are not being followed and admire the panoramic views before dropping back down towards Collobrières. If Maurad can’t find his own weed patch, there’s not a lot of hope for the Gendarmerie! We are both equipped with Lidl carrier bags, known for their legendary reliability and outstanding authenticity when stuffed with marijuana and tied on the back of a moped. I think of them as a statement about myself: “Here is both an unmitigated cheapskate and a man unable or unwilling to distinguish between good and evil.” That’s right!.

Maurad's Weed

Maurad’s Mountains

Back to the brainstorming: the three of us have been trying to fuck up this Chestnut Festival for about five years now, without much success, a comedy of dumb errors in fact. Like the year we decided to Rick Roll the whole town from my attic; the crowds just loved it, thought it was Mister Fantasy himself playing a tune to make them all happy, as it totally drowned out the official tuneless quintet with their outstandingly monotonous repertoire. Utter failure.

Another time, I had the wickedly cunning idea of a bomb scare, which had it been successful would have caused absolute mayhem. Unfortunately I decided to make the call myself. Its hardly my fault that I am so out of touch with the ways of the world that I believed only Irish people did the “der’s a bomb in me trousers” thing. Well is it?  With hindsight, maybe  it was a good thing that the French police don’t understand poor Irish, as it could very easily have backfired on us, the prank I mean, not the bomb, because of course there was no bomb. It was a hoax.

There have been countless other mischievous attempts to disrupt and disturb this annual outrage and petty crime against humanity; dropping stink bombs, redesigning the traffic system by heaving the no-parking signs and barriers into the river, doing rain dances, all to no, or very little avail.

The only ruse that we all assume did succeed, does not fulfill all the requirements of a practical joke and so does not count. Steve’s wife has pragmatically adopted the – if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em –  approach. She has a stand where she sells her very own and quite disgusting chestnut  flavored  spread with a label that would suggest that it is better tasting and much better for you than the hazelnut stuff I buy in Lidl. The joke is that Steve has been lacing her mixture for some years now with a very potent dose of  my very own homegrown marijuana – thus completely redefining Medicated Goo – but since nobody yet has opened the jar and tucked in immediately – she does not supply plastic spoons, bless her – I have never enjoyed the pleasure of witnessing their discomfort.

Steve told me that that this year it is going to be different. From the  comfort of my lovely cellar we will compose an illustrated news story about the day the good people of Collobrières finally rebelled and went on a burning, breaking and havoc wreaking  robbing rampage on the eve of the festival’s sickening opening ceremony.

I will take a moment here to make a comment about this pseudo-religious, very 21st century and utterly fraudulent “fraternite de castanaires”, roughly translated as the creepy brotherhood of people that have a cabalistic chestnut tree in their garden and like to dress funny. I moderate my own comments , they are assholes. Period

Now where was I? Yes Jad would take care of the writing part, being half French he has a little understanding of the vagaries of spelling and grammar. My daughter Taz would take care of the photoshopping, for the little vixen is not the stranger to the dual boot as she would innocently have me believe. She runs Fedora and TinyXP, with a fully functional copy of CS5… and its an extender!  Courtesy of TPB. What’s more she knows how to use it. Yet another point for home-schooling.

We will post our work on as many news hungry French sites as we can, on a Sunday too, so they won’t be able to verify it and if all goes to plan, nobody at all will turn up to this war ravaged and smoldering shell of a town.

Hang on Steve, don’t you think that more people  than ever will want to come and witness our scenes of burning, looting, devastation and criminality? Rather more interesting than just chestnuts roasting in an open fire.

Back to the old drawing board mate.

Very, Very Interesting

Question; who would make the – let’s just call it arduous – journey from Albuquerque New Mexico to Collobrieres France  just  for a 24 hour stopover? Answer; the bleary eyed dude in a stetson that I found on my doorstep late this afternoon. Why would he do this you may well ask? As we stand I have absolutely no idea. One night in Bangkok? Maybe, at a pinch, but here?

I’m not sure if he actually did say “howdy” as he offered me his hand and said in a gruff voice “Raylan”, which I took to be his name, but I did invite him in and offered a cold beer, which he politely refused as it didn’t feature on his list of refreshing summer drinks. Homemade lemonade on the other hand would be more than welcome. I sat him down with a bottle of Pschitt! He quenched his thirst without comment.

It was hard to squeeze much conversation out of this guy without beer, but I did learn that he was Ray Lannigan, Ice-cream king of Wagon Wheel NM and that he was here because he smelled opportunity; my Dear and recently departed friend Phyllis had in her wisdom written a small piece in The Curry County Tribune about her recent wonderful holiday, also posted a couple of summer fun pictures online. All that Ray had grasped from this was that everybody in this town wandered around with an  ice-cream in their face and what’s more it was any flavor you like, as long as its chestnut. The opportunity of a lifetime to a man of Raylan’s calibre. He had been planning to stay the night in The Expanded Backside, again on Phyllis’s recommendation, but this was festival time and he was fully booked until the end of the month. Could he “flop the night with me?”

Well he  didn’t seem like a bundle of laughs, but how often does Rodney, Duke of Yendor get to entertain  visiting royalty? “Sure”  and I showed him and his little bag to the great guest room in the sky where he could rest shower and change. “Thanks but I’ll pass on the shower and changing bit.”

An hour or so later came the inevitable, the part that I always dread when visiting Americans are in town. Ray announced that he was “so darned hungry” he would even be prepared to “eat cheese.”   In fact I can’t remember how many times I have sworn I will never set foot in a restaurant with an American again. Justified.

He hadn’t been able to stomach the offerings of Air France nor had he been able to make himself understood since he set down in Paris some ten hours previously. How he got here at all with nothing but a scrap of paper with my name and address scribbled on it is more than a little worrying.

“OK Ray”,  I say a bit too harshly ” but first I’m going to lay down a few ground rules about dining out in this country. Firstly, things usually start out with an aperitif or two, invariably Pastis with ice and a jug of water; we don’t drink mugs of coffee with the meal, even beer is considered uncouth, just wine or water. Got it?” He nodded strangely, I continued. “It is customary to use a knife and fork with the knife in the right hand, or even a knife and crusty piece of bread in the left hand; the meal will take several hours and of course please try to remember that in Europe  a waitress is considered to be a fully paid up member of the human race. Hands off! If you pay for the meal, I will take care of the tip,  as  I know from experience you will never, ever be able to get your head around tipping. Finally, the meal will almost certainly finish with the smug and sweaty chef offering us a glass of his special reserve firewater, reserved specially that is, for the clients he has ripped off the most that evening, and that my friend is going to be us. Still with me?” He was, but maybe it was just the long journey and lack of food that made him look so jaundiced.

A cool one and a half million

I wouldn’t normally be foolish enough to eat in a restaurant that I knew was for sale, who would? They never put up for sale signs for obvious reasons, but as a budding central scrutinizer myself I happen to know that The Terrasse Provencal is on the market for a cool one and a half million dollars. Happy in the knowledge that they would take any credit card Ray could throw at them, two dudes in stetsons were out on the town.

It was apparent that Ray considered the French national aperitif to be some kind of awful patent medicine, but he swigged it willingly and it had the same effect on him as on those that actually enjoy the stuff; instant-on loud and fervent chatter, borderline obnoxious. As he outlined his great plans for a string of Raylan’s ice-cream parlours, I noted with relief that our waitress – obviously hand-picked by the proprietor’s wife – was more like Winston Churchill in drag than anything he was likely to grope – but the night was young and I remained vigilant. My reputation in this town was already at rock bottom, but with Ray around it could always take a turn for the worse.

The meal itself went surprisingly well; we had meat and potatoes, puddings, even some cheese, and zero vegetables, washed down with bottle after bottle of Chateau Bastidon Rose wine that Ray was drinking as if it was Bud, no, not straight from the bottle stupid, I soon put a stop to that. After some slightly sobering strong black coffee, the greasy blob duly popped out of his kitchen brandishing an old fashioned looking bottle with a whole fat pear inside and came to our table with two tiny glasses. His trite and oft repeated speech fell on deaf ears, for Raylan was into yet another tear-jerking rendition of his favorite song  Lonesome Cowboy Bert - there’s the Zappa for those of you not expecting it – and only had eyes for the serving Wench.

I had a feeling that it was a bit too late to explain That Dr. Phyllis MacFarlane, careers adviser at Clovis Community College and Socorro Miss Personality 1975 was entirely responsible for his unfortunate misunderstanding. If she had seen, has she no doubt had, that Collobrieres had been dubbed both the capital of the Maures and chataignes, then she would empirically deduce that these words were synonyms for ice-cream in the language of Moliere, hence the confusion. It was, far too late. I don’t think we were actually thrown out of the diner or even sang anymore on the way home, kicked any cats or peed through anyone’s letterbox . My next recollection was Sunday morning.

“Howdy Rod” He did say it this time of that I’m sure, also that  I never seen a man so bright and so early on a Sunday. He had already been into town and bought fresh croissants and a local map, how much French did he learn last night? The coffee was percolating nicely and Ray was bubbling with excitement sticking pins into the map and sounding like he was playing solo Monopoly. Two motels here and here, a proper gas station here with a Toyota dealership and a car wash. A fast-food outlet here here and here. Jeez Rod, there are thousands of people out there with nothing to eat but some kind of nut, the likes of which I haven’t seen since the last time I took a shower, and he grinned for the first time since we’d met.

roasting-pan

He was gobbling pastries, slurping coffee looking at his watch and talking all at the same time, like a man who had left his helicopter running on the outskirts of town……?

“Look Rodney, you take care of the relocation incentives, tax breaks and recruitment subsidies – ship in some Chinks if you need to – as we agreed last night – and I’ll be back in a week, oh and you can tell greaseball that since his place is over  three hundred years old, its time for a  freaking refit, one million cash, that’s my final offer.”

And he was gone… Pschitt!

Lesson learned, they’ll have to change the slogan “Collobrieres capital des Maures” to something they might understand in Eddy or Grant County, Roxy and elsewhere; something like: ” Collobrieres, we’re growing, come join us.”

We are growing, just not what they’d think.