We have recently come in contact with our immediate neighbour's ( Etienne )  sister  during the EDF chainsaw massacre  ( 24/05 post ) as she was doing a dossier  on the damage they had done. She is a very formidable short woman with incredible energy when you think she is 84yr. She explained she had a grandson  staying in August who wanted to improve his English so we arranged an exchange with Teddy who is staying with us before his parents arrive.During her second visit she explained that her deceased husband had hid in the loft of the gite "les Etables " from 1942 onward as Coat Aillis was the communication base for the local resistance in the last war. During our renovation of that gite we found a Lee Enfield mk2 rifle hidden in the gables

The story that led up to her late husband hiding was he was a "de Staint Laurent " and lived in the local chateau   a few fields away  and an allied airplane crashed on the beach at St Efflam and the 2 pilots were hidden at the chateau then passed on to escape to the UK , but unfortunately the gestapo  came and took the mother away and she died in the camp Ravensbruck in 45 and all the children  ( 10 of them ) were dispersed as they were afraid they would be deported as well, so my neighbour who was a couple years old was put in a monastery where as Jacque ( her husband ) who was 17 and good at telecommunications/ morse code hid in the  loft of les etables while his older brother escaped to England.

I went to a meeting /demonstration on the " toxic beach" at St Michel en Greve last Sunday where there was hardly a trace of seaweed in fact it was the cleanest I have ever seen no doubt due to the presence of the TV cameras and the national press. The consensus seems to be that there should be better policing of the couple of intensive units inland  plus a change of husbandry by the farmers to stop growing maize which is very shallow rooting and leaves the fields bare from November to April  ( unless the farmers put in a green manure crop ) and to grow lucerne a crop with a very deep rooting system. The statistics show on average after the maize is cut there remains about 140 units of N in the ground which then leaches into the watercourse. The other consensus was that the entire team of bureaucrats at the prefecture should be sacked!