This story is written by Joanna Bending, a dedciated staff member from the naughties era reminisicing about a wonderful local helper.
Ah, mon Dieu! Nom de Dieu!
In fact that is blasphemous, I rescind that expression. Nom de Dieu, c’est un vrai bordel là-dedans! Oh no! I just wrote it again!
“My God, it's a right mess in here.”
Favourite expression from a favourite old French chap I once knew in a small Alpine village I used to cook in. Simon was his name. Lighting fires was his business.
Every establishment he visited with his kindling and his cardboard boxes would keep him refreshed with a petit verre as the day progressed. He’d wonder around in the same clothes he’d been wearing for days, weeks, forever, but thankfully he never took his jacket off so our sensitive noses were spared. Always a Poma cap on his head from the days he used to work at the lift stations.
Simon's post had been at the top of a lift, a job requiring attention and mechanical expertise. He'd often, however, get bored and wander off with his binoculars to look at wildwife. I think he was retired early (!). A gentle soul. He was the village mascot. He looked like a character from Tin Tin. He spoke not a word of English. He pinched girls bums, and then would look the other way. He was shy and silly, a bit "touched" might one say?
Simon and his brother Émile were sent, as orphans, to the moutain village of Vaujany in WW2 to escape the German occupation of Grenoble. I'm not sure how their parents died.
He started with a Petit Vin at 9am… a palate cleanser. Maybe a Cafe Rouge? A Verte Chaud? A Cafe Rouge, as the name suggests, a concoction of red wine and coffee favoured by farmers mid morning, who'd started their day at 4 or 5 am. The Verte Chaud, the local spirit Chartreuse, almost undrinkable to me at 60% proof... a herbal liqueur made by Carthusian monks in the Chartreuse mountains north of Grenoble, added to hot chocolate. Maybe a thimble of Ricard at 11? A little boule of Vin Blanc at midday?
Simon sat in the hotel bar of an afternoon and played cards, belote for those that know it, with his pals.
Every day without fail he'd walk into the Hotel Rissiou, which in those days was a wooden structure, it was lopsided and ancient and falling apart and exclaim, "Nom de Dieu! C'est un vrai bordel là-dedans!"
Those of us working behind the bar would giggle. Michel, Gerard, Maurice, Émile, AKA MéMé, petit GéGé, MoMo, MiMi... His buddies. The elders of the village. I think they used to poke fun at Simon. Maybe have ideas that they were superior to him. One was deputy mayor, one was foreman for the roads of the county, I think another had a bureaucratic career to do with agriculture. They all had chickens in their back yard and were at odds with this sleepy farming mountain village, once a hub of the resistance during WW2, now becoming a tourist destination for skiers.
The French government built a hydroelectric dam and power station, infact the largest in France, at the bottom of the valley, the Lac du Verney. Work started in 1978 and was completed in 1985. For all the trouble and disruption, the village of Vaujany was awarded hundreds of thousands, which they used to develop a cable car to link them to the larger ski area of Alpe d'Huez, thereby putting Vaujany on the map.
Surely all those old boys must now be gone. I remember hearing Simon had died maybe 10 years or so ago.
I'd imagine it must have elicited mixed feelings to see their village become so gentrified and touristy. The old Rissiou Hotel is now a 5 star Spa hotel, Hotel le V, serving fancy cocktails...MéMé's falling down barn next door is no longer.... there are no longer cows hidden in sheds.
There is now an Olympic-sized covered skating rink where international ice hockey competitions are held at the bottom of the village. There's a shopping mall (of sorts) which sells designer togs. A local farmer wouldnt be allowed to pop in to the hotel bar and be given a petit vin on the house in return for lighting the fire...
Simon was surly and funny and grumpy and gruff and childlike.
Simon never married.
I found out many years later that, as a young man, when he returned to Vaujany after fighting in the Algiers War, Simon returned to find his draft-dodging brother Émile had married his childhood sweetheart.
Simon had a broken heart.
Written lovingly by Joanna Bending
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