Hello Victor! You’re an early bird today!
Well, I’ve been at the wine fair with Gerard so I thought I’d drop in for a glass…see who’s around…
Yes, a drop of Claude’s rose will do nicely….
No one here yet, Victor…probably still all at the wine fair! Claude didn’t enter anything, I see.
No…he doesn’t these days. Fed up with all these clever dicks making special vats for the judging from what he said last year when that filthy devil Patrick from Les Deux Biscouilles won a bronze for his Gamay….I reckon he bought that in from his wife’s brother over at Ste. Conasse.
Mark you, Victor, the whole wine world is going crazy….you know Zizi’s place?
Well, three young guys have taken it, split it up in plots under the limit to have to pay insurance to the Mutuelle Sociale Agricole and they’re producing all sorts of stuff the A.O.C. doesn’t allow and they’re doing well!
You wouldn’t believe the labels they put on their bottles….‘Les Cabernets sont au Fond du Couloir’….’L’Enfant Terrible’ but it sells like there’s no tomorrow!
Whole world’s going crazy if you ask me. Now the Post Office is going to deliver the post by drones…
Are you sure that’s not an April fool stunt?
It sounds like one but nothing would surprise me these days….
The drones will probably carry bombs to drop on those who haven’t paid their taxes….and talking of taxes, did you see Hollande on the box?
Did I not! I had it on in here and had to turn it off because the guys wanted to put a hammer through the screen! There he sits, like a turd on the pavement, telling us he’s going to see it through! All right for him stuffed to the gills on public money…let him try making it!
Oh, he knows how to do that all right! Years of double and triple payment as a politician…expenses galore….fiddling his tax returns…we’ll find out next he has a Swiss bank account!
Just like his minister for the budget…busy telling us all we had to make sacrifices and sitting on a pile in Switzerland…not to speak of some underhand contracts with the pharmaceutical firms.
And what’s the prime minister getting out of this project for a new Nantes airport?
It won’t be a camper van he’ll be using for his holidays in the future….probably a private jet on the new landing strip….
Here, give me another glass….
You sure? I’m not being funny but you must have had a few at the wine fair…and you know what the gendarmerie are like these days!
Not to worry; there’s no risk today. The police are getting pissed at the wine fair and there’ll be no gendarmerie out today.
Cheers!
Why won’t they be out? It stopped raining this morning….
Because they’re sleeping off being out all night at the supermarkets.
Didn’t you hear?
All the big supermarkets were targeted last night by the Young Farmers.
They blocked the entrances to the car parks and the doors with piles of stinking old straw…covered the trolleys too so you can imagine the state of it all after a night of rain.
Young Laurent was down there with my muckspreader…he said it was like the War of the Worlds…tractors, trailers, state of the art stuff out there working under the lights, dumping this filth…twenty or so farmers at each site, all starting at once….quite an experience for the lad.
He was too young to go when we blocked the petrol pumps a few years ago…
But what about the gendarmerie?
Oh, once the supermarket bosses saw what was happening on their security screens they went down there…and the gendarmerie turned up to protect the farmers from being attacked.
What…a couple of office slugs against twenty farmers….!
Very nasty these bosses….they can make very wounding remarks…
Anyway, that’s where the gendarmerie have been all night so we won’t be seeing them out and about for a while.
I suppose it was about prices?
Yes….the supermarkets are squeezing the producers until the pips squeak….especially the milk boys.
And not just them. Did you see that tanker that overturned last week? Full of Spanish goat milk!
Well, yes, but the cheese factory boss said it was a one off…the local guys’ production falls in the winter and he has contracts to fulfill…
I’m not so sure….I bet the Young Farmers would like a look at his books!
But anyway, this can’t go on, the supermarkets squeezing the suppliers like this….
Well yes, I suppose they’ve had to cut everything to the bone as it is.
Too right! And if they don’t get an increase in the milk price how’re they going to pay for those state of the art machines they’ve all been buying: that’s what I’d like to know!
Ah, Clement! Just up from the wine fair?
Let’s have a couple of Claude’s rose….
The Venomous Bead 
I didn’t see the farmers protest at the supermarkets on the news – how the hell did I miss that? It’s all deliciously French.
It’s in darkest France…a friend sent me the clip and knew some of the people involved (as, it turns out, did I!)
And so typical that the gendarmerie turn out to protect the farmers!
Look, why don’t I just leave a generic comment for you and every time you post something like this you can click on my comment?
Clochemerle! How man 🙂 can I enter?
More power to your flexible elbow!
Post delivered by drones? Love it. Of course, they’d still miss.
American design…French operated….it has to go wrong somewhere…
Reading this on April 1st, I still know it’s NOT an April Fool post…..Anywhere else, it could be, but not in La France Profonde!
No….in La France Profonde if they’re not shoveling shit outside the supermarket they’re inside confiscating the New Zealand lamb….(and what happens to it, I’d like to know…)
mais c’est normale… n’est pas? 😉
All too much so….
Those French farmers certainly have the necessary equipment to make shit loads of mess. 🙂
I can remember one of their commando raids on a local supermarket when i was shopping. Some goon asked me why I was buying frozen New Zealand leg of lamb rather than French so I replied that it had three advantages…a good meat to bone ratio, sorely lacking in the longshanked local variety on sale….I supported grant free agriculture…and it was a handy weapon when accosted in supermarkets.
There you are, there are people who speak up after all. The deafening silence coming from our farmers vis-a-vis supermarkets makes it seem that these conditions do not equally exist here.
There have been mutterings and the FU has declared itself unhappy but chucking shitloads of manure is simply not in the nature of our farmers.
People who speak up because the forces of law and order do not touch them. They can do as they please…including burning a lorry load of live lambs.
Let U.K. farmers try it and their wellies wouldn’t touch the ground.
I’ve yet to encounter a French farmers protest! I feel quite left out. I’m sure when I do it’ll be at the worst possible moment though and I’ll be most unsympathetic
As I was when they blocked the petrol pumps…protected by the police….
Love your post! Wish I’d been there, actually… and a fantastic April 1st kickoff for me!! Thanks!
I’ve often thought it would make a change from the usual tourist spectacles….
Plus ca change…… Only in France, whoever’s in charge.
At the moment I feel like asking
‘Is anybody there?’
Did I detect a hint of cynicism in there….?
Just a soupcon….