TOWN TWINNING

One of the few compensations of having a large printing order to discharge, as we had this week, is that you get to listen to Radio 4 a lot. And want a wonderfully eclectic mix of programmes you find there! If you are an intellectual butterfly like me, vaguely interested in pretty much anything, you can find yourself listening to it more or less continuously while the thermal printer chomps away in the background.

In the last few days I have learned about midwives, prostitutes, Stanley Baldwin, a Chinook helicopter called Bravo November and how intensively reared chicken is altogether a Good Thing if the limit of your perspective is global warming. I have listened to the Archers, learned about the Burmese tragedy and and bristled at Susan Sarandon berating Hillary Clinton.

Not that the radio has had things entirely its own way. For between these printing sessions and other, more regular work, I have been assisting, as the French would say, in the biennial visit of families from Clisson, our twin town near Nantes.

They arrived on Thursday bringing with them both sunshine and their own portable loudspeaker apparatus and set up camp in our newly renovated Physic Garden, where the Committee had laid on the South Walian equivalent of a vin d’honneur. All very agreeable, you might say, but at the same time curiously transportng. For what with the bunting, the convivialité, the amplified French voices it seemed I was no longer in Wales at all but back somewhere in La France Profonde

Nor does this transporting stop with the bunting and ‘le micro.’ For the arrival of the French precipitates a rush of Gallic behaviour, even among us locals. Acquaintances that you barely nod to in the street suddenly greet you with a kiss on both cheeks. Apart from the absence of brioche and the unlikely substitution - caused I suppose by the relative strengths of the dollar and euro - of Blossom Hill Californian, for the ubiquitous Muscadet, the little reception could have been French.

It was the same with the Hog Roast last night. Trestle tables had been set out in the rugby club in three long rows. Some species of unfortunate pig roasted outside on a supersize barbecue. Pencil thin girls wafted up and down, depositing even more of the Blossom Hill on the tables. This embarrassed me as I am not a fan of wine grown in any English speaking country but our French guests affected not to notice, or if they did notice they remained unusually reticent on the subject.

The pig however refused to succumb without a struggle. I don’t mean that it started the evening oinking around on the hallowed turf of the rugby field. The butcher had done his job, but evidently the beast had proved more well-padded than expected and a great deal of the Blossom Hill disappeared while we waiting for the porcine epiphany.

This provided excuse for yet another round of cheek kissing and general amity before a local choir arrived in best Welsh tradition. After the choir a harp made its appearance, played by a woman in stovepipe hat - these were billed, after all as cultural exchanges - and the gentle rippling sounds mesmerized the audience.

After we had eaten, with the Blossom Hill, still not exhausted the choir returned and sang Myfanwy. For those who do not know it, Myfanwy is the saddest and most poignant of all love songs and the music alone evokes the longings of a young heart so beautifully that listeners are often reduced to tears.

Poor Bernadette, one of our visitors, found herself caught up with the conductor during this performance for reasons that need not detain us now. Never mind that the song was in Welsh and the music not exactly in the French idyll, she returned to her seat tears streaming from her eyes.

And so it went on. Not to be outdone the French visitors huddled to the front and sang and we banged the tables during that old happy drinking song ‘Chevaliers de la Table Ronde.’ Finally to shouts of ‘more,’ the choir returned and we all belted out together the national anthems - ‘Mae Hen Gwlad fy Nadau’ and the Marseillaise.

And so after a final round of cheek kissing and benedictions of ‘Nos dda (Goodnight) or even more endearingly: ‘Nos dda, Cariad’ (Goodnight, little darling) we meandered home happy.

I see that the performance is to be repeated tonight, with no doubt will be another attempt to drink California dry. Dancing is to be substituted for singing this time, which will be fun as the Clissonais confess to a variety of interesting folk dances. But why in our reserved little Britain do we not do this sort of thing more often?