A few autumn pics, its that colourful time of year again.

And suddenly its autumn.......................
just a collection of photos taken yesterday 

 

 

 

 

The traditional wedding re-enactment in a tiny French village.

St Germier is a rural hamlet in the Dept Deux Sevres of south west France. It is so small virtually nothing is recorded about it on the internet, except its geographical position. Which is, apparently; Latitude : 46.00, Longitude : 0.00.

The population can’t be more than a couple of hundred, in fact I doubt it’s even that. St Germier has no facilities; no schools, no shops, no bars, no bus (except the school bus), no Doctor, no Dentist, no Optician, no Pharmacy, no solicitors and no anything else.

The people who live there have to go into the next small town for their most basic needs. The exception being the church, it does have a very pretty little church and outside the church is has its own small war memorial.

There always seems to be flowers or wreaths of some kind at the foot of this war memorial. . It also has its own small fishing lake in the middle of a quite lovely park.

St Germier has its own Mayor (Maires in French) who every one knows and who apparently does a remarkable job of overseeing everything that happens in the village.

If you want anything from planning permission, to advice about how to fit your own fosse ( septic tank) , to what to do about the fox who is taking all your chickens, the first thing you do is make an appointment to see they mayor.Nothing, but nothing happens in the village with out the say so of the mayor.

The Mayor can be seen driving around the village on his own little motor mower cutting back all the grass verges in the village. He doesn’t get paid to do this; he just takes enough money to cover his diesel.

 

 

 

He does this because by not hiring someone to cut grass verges he saves money for the community to spend on other things. His father was mayor before him and his father before him. 

No one ever stands against the mayor in the local elections ( held every six years) because every one is more than happy with the job he does. 

He is almost 80 now and is standing down at the next election. No one quite knows what is going to happen when this mayor leaves office because there is no obvious candidate waiting in the wings (the mayor is childless). Every year there are two village events that every one participates in. 

There is the Mayors dinner where every one gets invited to the village hall to enjoy an evening meal with endless courses and a bottomless barrel of wine and then there is the wedding re-enactment held every August in the village.
The traditional wedding reenactment is planned throughout the year, the whole community joins in, costumes are made and dancing is practiced. 

Every one dresses in traditional costume and congregates in the village park next to the fishing lake. There is a bride and groom, the brides father, a priest, and someone playing the part of the village mayor.

Much of the lace that’s worn is original and has been handed down through the generations. The people gather under the shade of the trees for the first lot of photos and then they walk in procession out of the park and up through the village, they stop in the village square outside the village hall and perform traditional dancing, after the dancing there is another procession into the garden of the village hall where beer is served and a show on a makeshift stage begins.

I was lucky enough to be there for this years wedding and these are just some of the many photos I took. It was so hot that day, (about 35 degrees in the shade) I ended up putting the camera away and standing under the nearest tree. I have no idea how all those people, little children included, managed to dance in those long heavy costumes in that heat, but dance they did. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing and am so grateful I was there this year to witness it. 
A couple of weeks ago, I went to a tiny little fishing village perched on top of the cliffs about 5 miles along the coast from here. They also had a day of traditional costumes, traditional stories and music from the past and I couldn't help comparing the two events. These two villages are both tiny, both without amenities except the village church and the village hall and they both reenacted their past in story, song and costume. They are in different countries and lie about 800 miles apart and yet there were similarities in costume and tradition. My next post here will be about the day I spent at Auchmithy  and costumes, stories and music from the past.

Raquel Roinik, UN mandate holder and the 'bedroom tax'

I like this lady, her name is Raquel Roinik and she is the UN mandate holder on the right to adequate housing.  She came to the UK on the invitation of the UK government to assess the right to adequate housing against the human rights framework. She has apparently conducted 11 previous visits to different countries and is known to conduct her assessments fairly and without bias. This didn’t stop Tory MP Stuart Jackson calling her a ’loopy Brazilian lefty with no evidence and a political agenda’. Am I the only one who finds the attitude of our politicians embarrassing?, actually embarrassing doesn’t cover the way I feel, internationally mortified is a better description.
Last night there was quite a detailed interview with her on ‘Scotland tonight’, where she talked about the effect the  benefit reform generally known as ‘the bedroom tax’ is having on the most vulnerable and poorest members of our society.
This particular ‘reform’ is loathed throughout Scotland. It was imposed on Scotland by the Westminster government despite the fact it was vigorously opposed by the Scottish government at Holyrood. The Scottish government is powerless to prevent this legislation being imposed in Scotland, but possibly now the UN are involved the dynamics of the debate will change. Proportionately it has a much bigger effect on the people of Scotland than it does on people in other parts of the UK. This is because proportionately there are far more people in Scotland living in social housing than there are in other parts of the UK.
Her mission was to assess the right to adequate housing against the framework of human rights and because the ‘bedroom tax’ is such a controversial issue, it became an integral part of the investigation. In her preliminary report she has said that literally hundreds of written testimonies have been received from people who are suffering due to this legislation. She recognised the housing crisis within the UK but said it stems from long standing decisions not to increase the available supply of social housing and not to replace the stock of social housing  lost by the ‘right to buy’ legislation. On top of that the ‘austerity’ measures imposed by the government impacted on the individuals right to adequate housing.
The response of our political leaders to her ‘literally hundreds of written testimonies’, was to call it anecdotal evidence and not hard data. Which to me, simply confirms that the government cares not a jot about the lives of the real people. It makes me wonder what exactly this ‘hard data’ is that the government expects. Hundreds and hundreds of real case histories presented in written testimonies looks like evidence to me. Alongside the many, many written testimonies she also had access to government data; she consulted with academics and researchers and collected evidence from different parts of the country.
Her specific criticisms of the policy included the absence of any assessment of the impact this policy would have on the individual’s human rights. She made three basic recommendations and asked that the be implemented immediately. These are;
1.    Suspend the ‘bedroom tax’ and evaluate it against the framework of human rights.
2.    Regulate the private housing market where she saw security of tenure and high rents as specific problems
3.    Renew commitment of the government to supply sufficient social housing and affordable housing.

The fact that it takes a UN mission to make any one sit up and take notice is humiliating in the international community, but sadly not surprising given the attitude of this government. Its not as if her recommendations are extreme in any way, these  recommendations are so obvious they should have been implemented months ago by our own government without prompting from any one. I mentioned these reforms a few months ago here

http://forgetmenot525.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/welfare-reforms.html

Experiment in photo editing.

Last time I was in France I was lucky enough to see a traditional wedding re-enactment in the tiny village of St Germier. The whole village turned out for the occasion, all wearing traditional clothing. The wedding dress and the lace caps were original, sometimes family heirlooms . There was a procession from the little lake up through the village into the village square where the dancing took place. I’ve no idea how these people managed to dance in temperatures of 35 + . I felt as if I were melting and I wasn’t dancing or wearing a long heavy dress and gloves. 
I will do a whole blog about this one day, I have hundreds of photos and I will be posting more because it really was a lovely day. 

1. the original photo

 2. balanced and cropped using microsoft photo editing

3. starting to blur the background using GIMP free software.

4. finished photo, background blurred and some highlights using GIMP.

But for now, I’m using one of those photos as an experiment into digital editing. I’ve not really done a lot of this before, I can’t afford photoshop and I didn’t realise you could download free editing software.
Anyway, I took the original photo, altered the light and cropped it using the free Microsoft photo editing programme that every one has. Then I downloaded a programme called GIMP and carried on working on the photo. It has taken me days to get to this stage, I’ve just been doing a little at a time. It takes a lot of concentration and intense computer work. I wasn’t sure of it to start with, but now I really like the effect  and I’m very impressed with being able to do this for free. I  feel as if this is another art form, blending the background was quite like painting and I really enjoyed it. I think the finished photo has a very ‘painterly’ feel to it.
Actually, now I think about it, I like to be able to paint in a way that is almost photographic, and now I like my photos to look almost like paintings………..which is a bit odd I suppose.