Ian Moore - Cest Modnifique!: Adventures of an English Grump in Rural France

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Praise for Ian Moore

'Don't miss a single word Moore is a cultured comic'
LONDON EVENING STANDARD

'Relaxed, laconic, hilarious'
THE STAGE

'A brilliant storyteller'
THE BOSTON PHOENIX

Praise forC'est Modnifique!

'Ian Moore is a brilliant comedian whose wit is as sharp as his dress sense, and he has managed to take that on-stage storytelling brilliance and put it in his writing.'
John Bishop

'If Ian Moore writes this well in France, he should never be let back into the UK.'
Danny Wallace

'A delicious second helping of muck, mods and mayhem in rural France.'
Julia Stagg, author of L'Auberge

'Easily the best Englishman-abroad memoir since Gerald Durrell was in short trousers and knocking around pre-war Corfu.'
Tony Parsons

'Funny, charmingly grumpy. I loved this expat take on the ups and downs of life in rural France.'
Ben Hatch, author of are we nearly there yet?

C'EST MODNIFIQUE!

Copyright Ian Moore, 2014

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.

Ian Moore has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Condition of Sale

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Summersdale Publishers Ltd
46 West Street
Chichester
West Sussex
PO19 1RP
UK

www.summersdale.com

eISBN: 978-1-78372-218-1

Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Summersdale books are available to corporations, professional associations and other organisations. For details contact Nicky Douglas by telephone: +44 (0) 1243 756902, fax: +44 (0) 1243 786300 or email: .

For Samuel, Maurice and Thrence mes petits gars

Contents

School Daze
Adopt, Adapt & Improve
On the Hedge of Insanity
Getting My Goat
Unlucky for Some
Aut of Sorts
New Rules, New Rulers
Mother in Loire
Camera Shy
Needing Assurance
La Dliverance
Harsh Treatments
Bullied Goat Grump
The Home Guard
Seul Man
Finding Your Voice
No Pain, No Gain
Cross Words
Beyond Repas
A Ticking Bomb
Acting Up
A Very Cordial Entente
Nice and Quiet
Pussy Whipped
Question Time
They Shift Horses, Don't They?
Just the Beginning

School Daze

'Do you really live in France?'

Quite often I get asked this question in awe, with a barely concealed hint of jealousy. This was outright hostility, though. It was one of those gigs a comedian has nightmares about. One of those moments when no matter what you do, no matter what you try, no matter how much you turn on the comedic charm or, failing that, poke the wasps' nest with a metaphorical stick, the audience just isn't buying it. You've brought out the old infallible material, you've joked about your jokes not working, you've insulted the bloke with the nasty jumper on the front row and no, nothing. It's the comedian's worst enemy: indifference.

The implication from the heckler's question was clear: how could I possibly be successful enough to commute from rural France when I was patently (on tonight's shambolic evidence at least) not good enough for a sparsely attended, poorly lit room above a pub with a cheap microphone and an even cheaper backdrop?

He had a point. I was exhausted, though; the constant travel had finally worn me down, so now, when I needed to dig in, when I really needed to work the room, there was nothing there. All I could think of, all that was running through my head was, 'But I shouldn't even be here'

'Whereabouts in France?'

The heckler continued contemptuously, as if by testing my geographical knowledge the whole thinly constructed France charade would come tumbling down.

My half-French wife Natalie and I, together with our young son Samuel and old Jack Russell Eddie, had made the leap from small-town suburban England to the unfashionable end of the Loire Valley, where Natalie's family originates from, seven years previously. We'd bought a property that was far too big for us, in the middle of nowhere, and we loved it. It wasn't just home for us, it was paradise. The plan had been simple: fill the house with a large family and work towards the inevitable (in our eyes at least) time when Natalie would get a job locally and I would give up stand-up entirely and concentrate on writing. It was a plan painted in broad strokes and short on detail, but it didn't seem to matter; it was just obvious to us that one day it would happen.

And pretty quickly we got halfway there; we filled the place with a large family. Samuel, now 11 years old, had two younger brothers, Maurice (seven) and Thrence (three). Eddie had enjoyed her last few years as master of her domain and had died peacefully, only for Natalie, with the zeal of a nineteenth-century missionary, to replace her with two more dogs, two horses, two cats and two hens (not counting many other animal comings and goings), creating a menagerie which collectively had about as much idea of 'peace' as an excitable school trip on a car ferry.

'Don't you miss England?'

A different heckler chirped up now, a woman who tragically and fatally for a comedian trying to stamp his authority on the room had apparently taken pity on me.

The truthful answer was a straight, unequivocal 'no', for the simple reason that I was spending more time in England than I was at home anyway. I was fast becoming history's most uncommitted migr. A lot of expats and I know because I've gigged for them all over the world will give you a whole list of things they miss about 'home', from Marmite to pubs to the Antiques Roadshow, to drinking in the street and swearing at traffic wardens. Well, I am an expat and all I was missing was the country that I'd ostensibly moved to in the first place! It didn't seem right. And I was missing my family, animals included if I was pushed. I just wasn't seeing them. Not just 'I wasn't seeing them often enough', but a more upsetting, far more hurtful and damaging, 'I wasn't seeing them much at all.'

'Why?' interrupted the angry heckler again.

The whole gig seemed to be descending into a good-cop, bad-cop heckle-off, while the rest of the audience either checked their watches or stared at the grubby, 1970s-style patterned carpet, all a little embarrassed.

'Why did you go there? Were you run out of the country?'

He laughed at his own joke, thankfully getting even less response than I was getting.

The plan (and that really is giving what was actually just 'a vague notion' far too much gravitas) concerning my retirement from live performance comedy was largely scuppered by the very real need to earn money. We live in a relatively poor area of France, an agricultural backwater, and any job that Natalie had previously been able to find was minimum-wage and necessitated being away from home all day hardly possible when trying to care for a sizeable human family, alongside what had become a burgeoning and practically full-time animal rescue centre. In fact it was difficult enough trying to fit everything in even while she was, at this point, on maternity leave.

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