Economic Slowdown in Rural France

Mark Sampson - Fri 14 Dec, 2007

Madame R. at the local hardware shop in Martel is a worried woman. It was nothing to do with the chainsaw that I was carrying with intent when arrived at the shop. Nor, hopefully, with my regrettable breach of etiquette last summer (of which the less said the better). I should explain at this point that Martel is our local community centre perhaps best describes its role in the area. By which I mean its bigger than a village, but smaller than a town...

Madame R. at the local hardware shop in Martel is a worried woman.
It was nothing to do with the chainsaw that I was carrying with intent when arrived at the shop. Nor, hopefully, with my regrettable breach of etiquette last summer (of which the less said the better). 

I should explain at this point that Martel is our local “community centre” perhaps best describes its role in the area. By which I mean it’s bigger than a village, but smaller than a town. 

My wife and I first set eyes on it 17 years ago, when we were touring. We had the vague notion of investing the credit of a surplus £15,000 arising from a move from Brighton to Sheffield. We looked at an old restaurant in one of the medieval alleyways of Martel, but failed to see how easily it could be converted back into a home. We lacked, too, the maturity and foresight to discern a much better buy than the isolated farmhouse for which we eventually settled. 

It took a while to learn that the “location location location” cliché applies just as much to rural France as it does to the UK. Thirteen years later, and now settled in France, we moved back from “the sticks” to the area where we had originally prospected. 

But to return to the subject of my meeting Madame R in the local quincaillerie (hardware shop). We were talking about Martel, which like so many of these medieval jewels, teems with tourists for two or three months of high summer, then dies a lingering death for the rest of the year. 

She nodded and made a gesture towards the shop. “Well look at this place,” she said. “There’s no one. No one. It’s been like this for weeks. No one’s got any money.” She sighed, “it’s going to be a long, hard winter.” 

“As if they weren’t long enough and hard enough already,” I said with a mental nod to my dysfunctional chainsaw and all the wood I needed to cut. 

Whereupon Monsieur R appeared from the workshop with my newly repaired mountain bike. I handed him my misfiring chainsaw in exchange. It was maybe just a problem with the timing mechanism, but I’m as wary of tinkering with it as I am of using it. Monsieur R. is such a nice obliging man that I’d far rather pass some business his way than work myself into a lather. 

It’s ironic really. At one level, their hardware business couldn’t be better. The workshop is replete with venerable looking chainsaws, strimmers and motor mowers. But at another level, that’s the trouble. Everyone is eking out the old rather than splashing out on the new. Few around here have the wherewithal to buy the gleaming new accoutrements of rural life that they stock. 

I paid him €19.90 for a new brake cable and half an hour’s labour from his assistant. Once he’s paid his mechano’s wage and the cost of the premises, that can’t leave much by way of profit. There’s clearly not a fortune to be made in repairs. 

As I loaded my bike into the back of our Citroën Berlingo, I found myself humming Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall”. I wonder how long my old chainsaw will keep going. I wonder how much longer Martel will have its own hardware shop. 

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