Another pointless ‘farmhouse’ motif
more legislation – this time guaranteeing that produce will be sold at a price which delivers the producer a decent margin.
If that sounds a vaguely familiar formula well then it is: it’s precisely what Farmers for Action has been campaigning to achieve here for years – and precisely what successive governments (governments knowing full well that keeping food prices low can pay dividends when ballot boxes are being filled) have resolutely refused to contemplate. that it was merely a region people drove through, whether Brits on their way to or from the channel ports and holiday hotspots further south or Parisians heading to or returning from Brittany, in either case rarely stopping for more than a snatched lunch.
Now Mayenne is an undulating, delightfully bucolic stretch of France crossed by several tributaries of the Loire but with little if anything that, in the normal course of events, you would rank as a tourist attraction. Though it did boast a number of fine restaurants serving the outstanding local farm produce and these were chosen to form the foundation of the drive to get people to stay and explore Mayenne rather than merely using it as a staging post.
So some European funding was obtained to tart up a couple of old castles, uncover some Roman remains and provide ‘interpretation’, and to finance a facelift for the gallery in Laval that’s home to some of the best canvases by Douanier Rousseau. And Giles was brought on board.
Giles was the ideal man for the job. A shrewd publicist. One who realised that handsome returns were to be had by generously wining and dining journalists. And who also realised that – particularly in the provinces – the French are a dreadfully gullible lot.
So in his first weeks in the job Giles got to work, called in the local newspaper editor and hatched a plot. With the result that on April 1 the paper ran a splash announcing that huge oil deposits had been discovered in Mayenne and the local authorities were set to take in hundreds of millions in revenues as a result.
And as a foretaste of the future prosperity all would enjoy, the paper printed alongside the article a coupon entitling the presenter to 100 francs’ worth of petrol or diesel at any filling station in the département. Dozens of coupons were clipped out, handed to cashiers after tanks had been filled and immediately rejected as bogus. Hundreds of angry encounters followed and some blows were struck.
And the next day the paper was able to run a follow-up revealing how large sections of the public had been duped. The story reached the wider media and Mayenne achieved precisely the national fame the newly formed tourism board had been seeking though the attention was shortlived – and not enough to add Mayenne’s 5,000 square kilometres to anyone’s top ten tourist destinations.
MY thanks to the readers who got in touch following my remarks last week about the appropriation of the ‘farmhouse’ brand for everything from industrial bread to shoe tidies.
It is, however, my solemn duty to report that on the afternoon of their publication we took delivery of a new cooker. Removing the prodigious amount of packaging which encased it we stood back to admire it – only to observe the word ‘Farmhouse’ picked out in silver lettering on the front.
Other than those nine letters there is nothing suggesting the appliance is anything but a bog standard cooker.
There is no voluminous bottom drawer to accommodate orphaned lambs; no special, low-output plate where a pot of tea can be kept stewing for a couple of hours; no hook on the side where a sodden Barbour can be hung to steam.
Just a name; a pointless name which adds nothing to its appearance any more than it will enhance its cooking performance.
But nothing, it seems, is safe from the curse of the farmhouse these days.