Marsh Mellow

Mrs A has got a job (of which more at another time) and therefore, naturellement, needed to go shopping for clothes. Unfortunately our local town, the largest in our Departement, is sadly deficient in clothes shops to suit Mrs A’s style. So whenever we need to go looking for clothes we have to decide which town to visit. The largest shopping centres within easy reach are Limoges and Clermont Ferrand but on this occasion we opted to go to Bourges, the ‘capital’ of the Departement of Cher and of the area traditionally known as Berry.

One of our reasons for choosing Bourges was that it has an area, Le Marais (the Marsh), that we have wanted to visit for some time. Well, what a good decision that was!

Unlike the fascinating district of the same name in Paris, the Marais in Bourges is still a large wetland. True the rivers which have created the marsh are now channelled and controlled but, to our eyes at least, despite this management and shaping of nature, the area is absolutely beautiful, overlooked as it is by Bourges’ imposing cathedral.

The almost 400 hectares of the marais are crammed with gardens which, despite their unusual setting, would be instantly recognisable to Britons as allotments. Virtually all of them were bursting with fruit, vegetables and flowers, had wonderful sheds and sitting areas and, on this Saturday afternoon, were hives of activity. The allotment holders were harvesting, mowing, fertilising, building with the sort of intensity you find on a warm sunny autumn day, all doubtless trying to get everything shipshape before winter.

Gardening in the marais brings a benefit we can only dream about. The gardens are surrounded by water. The rivers and channels give a year-round supply that must be the envy of all other gardeners in central France. However those very waterways create their own issues, not least that many of the gardens are accessible only by punt. Not only does produce have to be brought out of the gardens by boat but, of course, lawnmowers, water butts, sheds etc all have to be taken over that way too.

The whole visit was immensely uplifting for us both and we will definitely revisit. And, to complete the success of the day, Mrs A’s shopping expedition was successful too!

And Now For Something Completely Different.

We have to smile. It’s only a matter of a few months since some Home Secretary or another (Dr John Reid, the scariest man in Britain, we suspect) was boasting that Labour was locking up more people than Michael Howard (his predecessor as Scariest…) ever did. (Surely that’s an admission of failure, not success.) Now he’s got nowhere to put them all. What were those slogans? ‘Tough on crime and the causes of crime’ and ‘Joined up Government’. Don’t you just love politicians?