Memories: Marie Jo or how news travels?

[anotherbanana]

A visit to Marie Jo. This is true, Clochermerle veridique!

Visiting Marie-Jo is generally a bit of a risk these days; not just because her coffee is inclined to burn holes in the lining of the stomach but because one never knows how she is going to be.

At her splendid worst, she babbles incoherent, half formed-sentences that have no logic, no beginning and no end, from which key words flyout irregularly and have to be grabbed as the only way to find out what she is talking about. They trip themselves up as she speaks faster and faster, until she is so tongue-tied that she goes off to swat a fly or wipe the tap or shout at her husband who is well hidden away.

And then remembers you are there and pours more coffee. And starts again.

Most of these intervals relate to her last born son, his less-than-robust physical and mental state, or the shortcomings of his current girlfriend whom she is convinced will take the boy (he is 36) away from her, use him up, and drive him to yet another breakdown. As this has happened with just about everyone of his girlfriends, she worries from experience.

At her best, she is witty, sharp, coherent and lethal in her way, for she is able to spread village gossip faster than a politician flipping promises; yet to my knowledge she never actually visits the village and sees almost no one, beyond a bread delivery lady and a monthly hairdresser.

So what happens, where does the gossip come from, how does it travel, does it have a life of its own, is it like a virus or a bird? These questions remain to be researched as significant historical alternatives to radio, TV, the internet, and satellite communication.

I saw Marie-Jo last week for the first time in a while and, thank Bobo, she was on form.

Within ten minutes I knew it all: there was the girl down the road, the one who replied, when asked if she was courting ah oui, il le faut, who had just got married, well, not married, but PACSd, and what did this mean, and what a thing to have happened in the village, but her parents were ok with it and only relieved she had not married the boyfriend before who was well, you know, dark.

Then there was the gay marriage, between those two boys from the Church school who were thought a bit odd anyway, and what a thing to happen in the village, and they were living just up the road in the house where the gay English vicar and his friend had spent every summer for ten years.

But worst of all, the mayor had left his wife who was a depressive and who had moved into town, and was being seen to by the widow §§§§§§§§ which was not a surprise really as she was that type, and wasnt it really bad for the image of the village that the mayor should be separated and at it.

And then she remember I was there and asked loads of questions.

Ah Marie-Jo

[anotherbanana]

I might add that Marie-Jo is a real person with whom I still talk on rare occasions. Her current obsession is with one of her rabbits, the buck, which she thinks might have ‘mixy’ as she calls it. The solution is of course to kill it, cut off the head and then eat the rest as normal.

She also swears by the ‘laying on of hands’, done by a mysterious woman in a nearby village, which cures many ills, particularly ‘the stomach worms’ which many seem to suffer from, brought on, I suspect, by eating dodgy pork.

She also has tales to tell about the Occupation and how she as a little child was hidden from the Germans and how the house down the road hid Resistance fighters in the well. Eventually the same well was used to commit suicide, she says which is why it is now covered.

One thing she did tell me was that she made her husband sleep in the spare room and kept her youngest son in her bed until he was in his late teens. I understood that this was not a perversion but contraception as she had enough kids. And her husbands mother had had 15 births!