'Vendage' grape picker
After studying the Kibbutz system in Israel as part of his politics and sociology degree course, the idea of taking a look to see if the practice matched the theory was already hatching* in Viv's head. It was the spring of 1983, and he was sitting in the comfortable armchair in his room in the flat at number 83, Wolverhampton Road, Stafford, reading the Guardian newspaper. Suddenly, a small advertisement caught his eye. It said "Pick grapes in the south of France. £30, job guaranteed and transport included". After reading and re-reading the ad, he thought "What I could do, is pay to go down there, do the job, get to know the ropes, then next year I'll be able to head down there under my own steam without having to pay a middleman". Decision taken, I sent off the money and application form to the address in the ad.
After spending the night at his sister's flat in Bromley-by-bow, he got the tube to Victoria Bus Station and had to rush to catch the coach, which was just about to depart from the road outside the station. It was 9am in the morning. The coach went to Dover, and from there, crossed the English Channel on the car ferry, arriving in Calais in the late afternoon. For some unknown reason, Viv decided to keep the coach driver company during the overnight drive to Lezignan in the South of France. He sat in front seat, just behind the driver's shoulder, and the long drive was passed in a long, interesting conversation, interspersed by periods of silence when both driver and 'co-pilot' concentrated on the road ahead.
The coach finally parked in the main square of the small French agricultural town at 11am the next day, and the courier announced that there would be a two-hour break for lunch before everyone should return to the building on the other side of the square. This building was called the 'Maison des Jeunes' and it was where the vineyard owners would be coming later on to select their workers.
Viv moseyed out of the square to explore the area, and what should he see in front of him but a sign in French saying "Museum of wine - free wine tasting". "Well", he thought, "this must be the French equivalent of a brewery trip! Great news!". Just as with the British equivalent, there was a pretty boring view of the history of wine making first (with the exception of a big round wooden tank, which used to be used to tread grapes in the old-fashioned way). Then to the bar, where he was faced by a long line of wine bottles with wine glasses in front of them. Apparently, the idea was to taste the different nuances of the different wines in the region, but after the fifteenth glass, Viv couldn't care less what the stuff was called or where it came from! At 2pm, he staggered back to the meeting place, entered the large hall, and sat down on the floor next to two guys, one of whom looked like a punk rocker.
For the next four hours, the owners arrived looked around the gathered English hopefuls and pointed at the ones they wanted - it must have been very similar in a slave market a couple of hundred years previously. Once chosen, the lucky ones accompanied the farmers outside to their cars or trucks and were whisked away. Finally, it was getting dark and the only ones left were Viv the punk and his friend, who had been rejected by goodness knows how many vineyard owners! Maybe the courier bribed an owner to take us in the end, but just as we were beginning to get very pissed off, a short, squat*2 Frenchman, looking a bit like a more portly and crew cut version of Charles Asnavour, accepted the three of us and we were led out to a battered Citroen 2CV and driven to the village of Conilhac-corbieres, about 2 miles away. The main road ran straight through the middle of the village and our new 'patron'*3 turned right into a narrow uphill street with dilapidated two-storey houses on either side. After a short distance, he stopped, got out, and showed us into an old house. Up a flight of stairs there was a roomy living room, with a sink, an old fridge, a cooker and a large wooden table with benches on both sides. The patron pointed to a huge 20 litre carafe of wine sitting in the corner, and said "when that's finished, let me know and I'll bring you another one". He also stated that he'd be along to pick us up at 7am the next morning, then left. Now there's no better way to break the ice than free booze. Cups were found and Viv and his two new acquaintances sat around the table getting to know each other. At about 11pm, Viv remembered that his friend, Stuart, had recommended trying Pastis when he got to the South of France, so he persuaded the other two to set out to explore the village and experiment a new drink. They found a cafe open on the main road in Conilhac and proceeded to quaff several of these aniseed flavoured spirits. Then it was back to digs*4 again, more chatting, more wine, and then Viv can't remember any more.
When consciousness slowly returned, the first thought to enter his fuddled mind was "my God, this bed isn't very comfortable!". On further investigation, he found out why. He was in his sleeping bag stretched out on the stairs with his head on one step, his backside three steps down and his feet several steps further down. The next thought to break through the haze was "God's turban and tutu*5, do I need something to drink. My mouth feels like the bottom of a parrot's cage!". He slowly and gently extracted himself from his sleeping bag, climbed zombie-like up the remaining stairs to the living room, located the tap, and was just beginning to fill a cup with water when he heard a car drive up outside the building followed by two hoots of the horn*6. After emptying the glass of water down his parched throat, he trudged over to the window, opened the shutters and looked down. It was the patron looking up expectantly and shouting "time for work!". "Oh dear! This is going to be a bit of a trial", thought Viv through his throbbing hangover. He quickly woke up his two co-workers, threw some water over his face and negotiated his way down the stairs to the waiting car. They drove into the countryside for a couple of kilometres under a beautiful blue sky and glorious Mediterranean sunshine until arriving at the family vineyard consisting of two fields with the grape vines in long rows, standing about75cm from the ground and with appox. one metre between each line of plants. There were 8 people in all, five members of the patron's family, including his wife and granddaughter plus the three Englishmen. After a quick demonstration, razor sharp secateurs were distributed and the group formed a line of seven, crouched down between the vines with a bucket beside each one for the severed bunches of grapes. The eighth member of the team was the 'porteur', whose job was to go along the lines of pickers periodically with a big pannier on his back. When the buckets were full, each picker would empty the contents into the pannier and the porter would head towards a large trailer attached to the back of a tractor. There was a short ladder to gain a bit of height above the trailer before hurling the contents of the pannier over the shoulder into the trailer. Then a short break before it was time to repeat the process.
Of course, normally this work involving rapidly cutting off bunches of grapes and dropping them in a bucket, although backbreaking, would not present any problem to a healthy young man, but Viv's coordination was not at its best due to the mother of all hangovers. The result of this was that every so often he would nick his hand or fingers with the secateurs. At midday, they stopped for lunch and the patron took the Brits back to the village where they bought delicious French bread and cheese and tomatoes for lunch in the local village shop, then returned to the digs eat and stretch out their incredibly painful backs on the wooden benches - after four hours bent double, it was difficult to straighten ones back again! After lunch it was back to the fields again, and on arrival there, Viv got a shock. The patron came up to him, took both his hands in his, looked at the all the cuts and said "you can't pick grapes!". For a while, Viv thought that he was being fired*7 on his first day at work, but then the patron motioned towards the pannier, which the young French guy hadn't put on yet, and said, "From now on, you're a porter".
Well now, this was an incredible stroke of luck. Being a porter was a completely different kettle of fish. Instead of spending hours on end bent double or scrabbling along on hands and knees, the porter, as explained previously, was mobile. After a few days, Viv's shoulders got used to the pannier straps and he began to get much stronger in his upper body.
At the end of the first week's work, the Conhilac group got an invitation to a party at the digs of one of the other ex-pats in our coach-load in the neighbouring village of Mont Brun. The party was a wild affair and it was great to mix with women who they could communicate with in their own language, as all three in Viv's group had very limited French. The following day, Sunday, was a day off, so the party went on into the very early hours of the morning. One Sunday afternoon, Viv decided to take a walk into the countryside around the village. On his map of the area, he noticed a small trappist monastery at a place called Fontcouverte a couple of miles to the south of the village. As usual, it was a warm sunny day, so Viv set off to investigate. An unhurried stroll down country lanes which passed under bridges for both a railway line and motorway finally brought him to the village he was aiming for, and although there was no sign of any trappist monks, in the small church, Viv bought as small St. Christopher (pendant), which a year later, on his return trip to the area, he would give as a leaving present to one of his best friends in Stafford.
After three weeks, all the grapes had been picked and it was time for pay day. After reading the bumf from the organisation that had organised the trip, Viv noticed that the rate of pay for porters was higher than pickers, so when the patron arrived to pay them, after checking to see if the amount was correct, he tried to suggest that he should have received more that the others. The wise Frenchman, just looked at him, smiled wryly and turned away.
The grape picking came to an end, and the three Englishmen were taken back into Lezignan where the coach was waiting to return the migrant workers to the UK. Viv still hadn't earnt enough money to recover his initial investment in the 'package grape picking tour', so he went into the Maison des Jeunes to see if there was any chance of more work. There was, and it was located in the mountains a few kilometres from the previous vineyard. Therefore, he said goodbye to his countrymen and women and watched the coach depart. Later on the same day, he was picked up by a new family vineyard owner, this time driving a tractor with a trailer attached to the back, and taken to a new vineyard located about ten kilometres from Lezignan.
The living quarters at the new place were very basic indeed. No fridge, just a wooden box covered in gauze to keep the flies off the food and Viv's bed was a mattress on the floor. There were two English guys (their names have escaped me, so I'll just call them Sam and Steve) already installed in the run down*8 farmhouse which would be home for the next three weeks. Unlike the novices on the organised coach trip, these were experienced migrant workers, who travelled around Europe following the seasonal work as it came up*9. Sam was medium height, stocky with short brown hair, and Steve was taller with a hooked nose, fair hair and blue eyes. Both of them were very strong, and very good friends who had been travelling together for a long time. Viv got on with them well, and the evenings spent chatting around the large table in the old farm building were interesting and fun, especially as the free wine went down in vast quantities! One night, Viv was interested to watch a fly land on the kitchen table in the midst of one of our lively conversations. The fly walked over to a small drop of red wine which had fallen on the table and started lapping it up greedily with its proboscis. Drawing the attention of his two new friends to the phenomenon, the three of them watched with interest as, after 30 seconds or so, the fly stopped drinking and walked rather erratically to the edge of the table and then plummeted to the floor! The wine we were drinking certainly wouldn't have won any awards, but it was certainly strong!
This time, in the fields there was no porter. Everyone scrabbled along with two buckets, and when they were full, they were carried over to the trailer and emptied. Without the disadvantage of trying to work with a mega-hangover, Viv soon adapted to the picking and the three Englishmen were able to scuffle along, more or less keeping up with the French family they were picking alongside.
After a week and a half, we moved to another field which had bunches of large white grapes. During the first lunch break in this new field, the patron cut off some grapes, washed them and started eating them, indicating that we should do the same thing. They were absolutely delicious!
Roughly*10 two weeks after starting, the last of the grapes had been picked and the three foreign workers were paid and invited to the family house for dinner with the family. After having survived most of the time on French bread, cheese and tomatoes, the home-made cassoulet was a banquet for the three Englishmen. After the meal, at a table in the family living room, the twelve or so members of the French family plus the migrants, settled down to drink some of produce they'd been helping to make. Viv noticed quite early on that some of the hosts seemed to be trying to get the three foreigners drunk - for every one glass they drunk themselves, they offered 3 to their guests. Of course, as they'd been drinking heavily every night since the start of the job, the wine after an excellent meal had little effect on the Brits. At midnight, one of the patron's sons suggested heading to a local bar to continue the celebration, so six of us, in two cars, set off*11 for the nearest village and started downing glasses of beer in the local cafe. By about 2am, Viv had reached his limit, and no more beer would go down, no matter how hard he peered into his still three quarter full beer glass. Our French friends had run out of steam long ago, and declared that it was time to head back. An image stuck in Viv's mind on the way out, of Steve walking beside the bar on his way to the exit, drinking down all the remaining beer left in the abandoned glasses (I'd guess about two pints).
Both cars managed to negotiate the journey back with out incident. Viv was in one car, and Sam and Steve in another. When the two cars stopped, things started to move very quickly. Hearing a violent yell, and a string*12 of swear words, Viv got out of the car quickly and was faced by the sight of Sam flat on his back, with Steve astride him pummelling him with his fists. With the help of one of the Frenchmen, the two English guys were separated and taken back to the living quarters, where sleep came virtually immediately. Late the next morning, sitting around the table, neither of the two friends could remember anything that had happened the night before, BUT Sam's face was bruised and cut, and Steve's fists were in the same state. They asked Viv to tell them what had happened, but as the two friends were on their way to another job in the west of France, he elected to pretend that he also had forgotten what had transpired the previous night.
During their stay on this vineyard, Sam had lent Viv a book he had with him called 'Work your way around the world'. It listed where and when seasonal fruit and vegetable picking could be found in Europe and other countries, and also had lots of good tips related to this kind of work. When they said "goodbye", Sam gave Viv his copy of this book, and in his future trip to Israel, it would come in very useful.
Viv got a lift from one of the son's to the nearest junction of the A61 Autoroute and hitchhiked to Toulouse, where he bought a ticket to Montauban, hoping to remain undiscovered on the train until he arrived in Paris (he had an overdraft back in Stafford which his hard-won earnings would only partly pay off and for this reason buying a ticket all the way home wasn't an option). Feigning sleep when the conductor came by, he nearly got away with it, but an obnoxious woman opposite, told the conductor that the "Anglais*13" was trying to escape without paying, and he was turfed off the train in Cahors. As they say, every cloud has a silver lining, and it turned out that this beautiful town was well worth a visit. Nestling in the middle of an oxbow in the river Lot, this medieval city really is something special. Leaving his rucksack in the care of a friendly butcher, he spent a relaxing afternoon exploring this delightful town.
Before leaving the railway station, he'd checked the times of the non-stop sleeper trains to Paris and there was one due*14 in at 1.30am. After collecting his pack in the early evening, he headed back to the station and cooked up a 'stewp' (a cross*15 between a soup and a stew) on his petrol stove, and passed the time reading the book he'd been given back at the vineyard. The train drew in to the station dead on time. He knew that the guard*16 would be checking whereabouts people got on, so that he could identify where the new passengers would be, so on entering the train, Viv hurried through four or five carriages to get away from this danger area. Then came the gamble! He tried the door to one of the sleeping compartments with his torch shining dimly through his fingers. Yes! There was an empty birth*17 in the top bunk on the left of the four bunk sleeping compartment, so Viv jumped up onto it and got himself and his rucksack quickly under the covers. Then it was just a matter of waiting with bated breath. After a few minutes, he could hear the guard approaching and opening and closing the compartment doors. The sound of this activity came closer and closer until finally the door to Viv's compartment opened and a thin beam of torchlight flicked over the bunks. His heart missed a few beats, but then the door quietly closed again, and he could listen with relief to the sound of the guard receding into the distance.
The next morning, Viv was in the corridor smoking a cigarette as the train pulled slowly in*18 to the Gare d'Austerlitz in Paris. Then it was just a matter crossing Paris by metro, finding a motorway junction to the northern coast and hitching to Calais (these were the days before the Channel Tunnel had been built). Next came the ferry to Dover and a long hitchhike back to his flat Stafford. What happened when he arrived has been recounted in another section.
*Transitive verb (v.tr.) def. 3
*2 Adj def. 1
*3 'Boss' in French.
*4 Noun, def. 5
*5 This exclamation isn't original. Viv has copied it from Vivian Stanshall's excellent album "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End."
*6 Noun, def. 7a
*7 V.tr, def. 8
*8 def. 3
*9 def. 2
*10 Adv. def. 1
*11 Phrasal verbs - def. 5
*12 Noun, def. 5
*13 "Englishman" in French
*14 def. 5a
*15 v.tr. def. 8
*16 Noun def. 4
*17 Here the meaning of this word is 'place to rest'.
*18 Phrasal verb