France
28.4.16
Dear Rodie
I think it is high time I wrote to you, have often started before but there is a disinclination to do any writing at this game, I don’t know why but we can’t settle down to write a decent letter. Of course I get a letter home fairly regularly & you will no doubt get what news there is, & I must make that my chief excuse for not writing oftener to you. I am glad to hear from Mother that the photos got through safely. It seems ages since I
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sent them. We are now finished with Egypt & although I wouldn’t have missed it we were not sorry when the shift came. The two countries couldn’t be less alike. Egypt is a land of contrasts & opposites; magnificent mosques rise out of dirty dingey streets; in front of some of the shops in Heliopolis, that are as fine as I have seen, there are crowds of natives hawking goods. They are dreadfully dirty & the streets & footpaths are covered with evil smelling filth. Motor cars, donkey carts & strings of camels are passing all day & very often aeroplanes are to be seen overhead. Niggers of all sorts with
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their many-coloured robes jostle along the principal streets among all the fashionable ladies with their strikingly stylish dress, & the gussy officers with their gloves, cane & eyeglass. This strange mixture of luxury & magnificence with poverty & filthiness is the first thing that strikes one. The contrast is equally marked between the brilliant green strips along the irrigation canals & the bare sandy desert on each side. Even the temperature varies from a burning heat in day time to something near freezing point
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at night. It is a land of opposites whatever way you take it. France is so different. Everything seems so pleasant & harmonious. The South of France is noted for its picturesqueness & you can hardly understand how it looked to us arriving in the middle of spring after spending almost 4 months in Egypt. Not only did the green grass & trees look so cool & refreshing but everything appeared so clean & tidy, & it was almost like being back in N.Z to have
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intelligent white people to wave to & to exchange cheers. Fifty six hours in the train sounds sort of wearisome but there was not a an uninteresting moment the whole way, except perhaps during the night hours. The ground is intensely fertile & every inch is cultivated the great part being in grape vines. Larger fruit trees and crop, wheat I expect are also grown, but the unusual part of it is that there are no fences, neither along the roads nor between the paddocks or sections. Right to the tops of the low round hills there are plots of various colours giving it a decidedly patchwork appearance. Pure white roads
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wind across the country often running between rows of tall trees or straggling hedges but wire fences are no where to be seen. There is practically no stock as all the people seem to go in for grapes & crop. The holdings seem to be small as farmers live in little communities making small villages every mile or two. Each house has its garden, chiefly vegetables & it is surprising how neat they all are. The houses are nearly all old & built of brick with tiled roofs, around each house & leading up to most of them are tall trees, elms I am told, & at this
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time of the year, with their leaves just sprouting they look particularly light & beautiful. The whole country seems to be planted with these & similar trees, they are in groups & lines everywhere & on the undulating country they look very nice, in fact the whole of France, as far as we have seen, is simply a garden. Up here of course the season is a bit later but in a general way it is very similar to the more Southern parts. The farms here are larger & each farm has its house & farm buildings, usually built in a square about a chain across & all opening into the centre. Pigs, a few cows & crop seem to occupy the farmer’s time.
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Farm implements are decidedly old-fashioned – single furrow ploughs, wooden rollers, harrows etc. Dogs are often used for pulling small carts – you will have seen photos of them taken in Belgium. “Dogwheels” are also greatly in use, chiefly for churning, & nearly every house has one. The wheels are about 8 ft across & run on ball bearings. They are built close to the wall & a shaft goes through to the churn. The dogs here are used to it & go quite steadily but I would like to see a fairly lively dog get shoved in. I guess there would be some cream flying.
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We are getting along sort of slowly with our French but most of the people understand our English better than our French. Coming up in the train Hargest wanted to fill his water bottle so after looking at a phrase book he went up to a man on the platform & said “Ou est l’can?” (Where is the water). The man got it alright but the silly beggar instead of replying in English waved his hands furiously & rattled off a 10 minute oration in French. Poor Hargest never got a word of it & we watched him from the window & had a good laugh at his predicament. However the little we know often comes in handy & of course we are
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always adding a few words to our vocabulary. Since writing home I have got a few roots or tubers of what I referred to as small white ranunculus & will post them soon. I hope they carry alright but I am afraid. They grow here in the hedges & under trees, & are very pretty. They are just about finished flowering now. Cuckoos & swallows are plentiful here, the swallows dart in & out of the thatch on our billet & in the late afternoon & evening we
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can hear the soft far-away sound of the cuckoos in the trees around the house. Thrushes & frogs are also here by the score & between them they make the evenings pretty lively. The evenings here are delightfully calm & mild & we can sit out in the open & write until just on 8 o’clock. Often we go for a stroll into some of the villages around about. They are all over the country, about a couple of miles apart, so that there are several within strolling distance of here. Tonight by way of a change we had a game of
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cricket, schoolboy style, with tin wickets & a branch of a tree for a bat, the ball was more “up-to-date” being a potatoe tied in the toe of a sock. Anyway we had a good game & are talking of sending a challenge to some of the other billets. Mail is dribbling through slowly & tonight mother’s parcel of soap, lollies, clorodyne etc arrived. It was a very useful consignment & I spent the early part of the evening at the tub. At present I know of nothing that I particularly need, & at any rate it would not be much use sending
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home for anything as it is so long before I can get a reply. Am posting this in a “green” envelope & will send one to May by the same mail & you might let me know which arrives first. These envelopes are issued occasionally but a lot of the men say they take longer to go through. Hope you are all well.
Love from
Len
