Searching for ambient sounds

So I said I'd explain what sons d'ambiances are. Essentially, as part of the reportage, it is important to have atmospheric sounds in the background. A person just talking with no background noise apparently lacks ambiance. The odder the sound, the better. Two weeks ago I did a reportage on a project to make laundry in hotels more environmentally-friendly.  I know a lot about different types of laundry facilities now. I also had the experience of spending an uncomfortable five minutes standing in a local launderette, surreptitiously recording a stranger's laundry whooshing around. The glamour is too much, I tell you.

Last week I attended my first ever horse racing competition at the Petit Port Hippodrome in Nantes, in search of more ambient sounds. I wasn't disappointed. The horses were attracted to my tape recorder, and whilst I tried to interview their owners they jostled for attention, grunting as their huge heads pushed their patient minders to one side.

This is Ubriaco. He has fancy legwarmers on which I'm jealous of.

Whilst at the Petit Port, I also learnt what the horses eat to prepare for big races (beetroot pulp) and received a marriage proposal from the son of a horse trainer from Normandy with no teeth. I'm thinking about it.

You can listen to my horse report here.

In other news, I went back to Paris to see Lottie which was brilliant as always. Everyone in Nantes refers to Paris as 'une ville dure' and to their own city as 'une ville humaine' but what's hard or inhuman about living in a city that has it's own designer eclair shop? I don't know.

This weekend I went to the Chateau de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley, which was beautiful. I also found out that Diane de Poiters, an inhabitant of the Castle, fell in love with a seven year old (Henry II of France) when she was 27, but she did the decent thing and waited until he was 17 to get involved with him. Unfortunately, he was married to Catherine de Medici by that point, but Diane was still his fave so she just hung out at the castle a lot and occasionally signed royal documents. She was also obsessed with maintaining her youthful looks (as you would be if you were trying to snare someone 20 years younger than you), so she used to take baths in the River Cher all year round, believing it would preserve her complexion.

That's the 1550s for you. Catherine's daughter-in-law, Louise de Lourraine Vaudremont, also had a passionate love for her husband Henry III, so much so that when he died in 1589 she spent the rest of her life in the castle and covered her room in skulls and crossbones.

Happy in Chenonceau (in a room minus skulls and crossbones)

Overall it was a great day and a good chance to spend lots of time on the train, one of my favourite activities as it allows me to legitimately stare out of a window for hours. The French train system is pretty quirky. There seem to be strikes and delays almost every single day and the SNCF have planned accordingly by leaving enough 'Repas d'Urgence' on each train for all passengers, with lots of dried fruit snacks and an SNCF quiz book. 

They are also far more romantic as a transport network than the good old National Rail. Every time I ascend a train there are at least a dozen young couples saying tearful goodbyes, and a announcement telling those accompanying passengers to kindly alight before departure. This kind of business would be unheard of in the UK, where a stiff upper lip and countless ticket barriers prevent such romantic gestures.

Les 50 Otages

The format at work which I find the most challenging - but which can also be the most interesting - is the reportage. It is essentially a five minute documentary, and involves going out onto the 'terrain' i.e out of the office, to talk to people and get lots of 'sons d'ambiance'. More on that later...

A couple of weeks ago I did a reportage on the Commemoration of the shooting of the '50 Otages' who were part of the French resistance in Nantes during the Second World War. Obviously, this is a very important topic and I wanted to do it justice. However, after missing the initial memorial ceremony due to getting the time wrong and consequently spending a long while desperately searching the recycle bin at work for the information I'd written down, I was quite worried that I would have no material whatsoever.

Luckily, thanks to the kindness of my colleagues, I found myself at a second memorial ceremony in a suburb of Nantes, which I missed almost entirely due to the 'Chronobus' taking a mysterious detour in what seemed to be a route that went back on itself. Alas, I fear I will never understand the Chronobus, nor the Busway, nor the Bicloo or the other hybrid-named Nantes public transport systems. I hitched a ride back into the city centre with a bus full of war veterans wearing copious medals. I felt very out of place indeed but it was really interesting to talk them.

Once the bus had disembarked I was directed towards 'le Colonel', a man who must have been at least in his 90s and seemed to be almost completely deaf. He began to tell me about how he had fought in the French Resistance, helping to liberate France from German Occupation. I was pretty astounded, obviously - having spent a large amount of time studying French History, it was of course incredible to meet him...

But as I walked away, a man ran up behind me urging me to wait. He was a local historian and he wanted to tell me that this man was an impostor. It was a very sensitive issue, he explained. The 'Colonel' often showed up to such commemorative events. Most people weren't aware of the truth behind his story, but the historian had done extensive research and had found that in fact there was no evidence at all of this man's participation in the Resistance. If anything, he added, he had most probably worked with the Vichy government.

As a young history student this was pretty astounding to me. Of course I knew that many people in France bent the truth about what they, or their families, actually did in the War. But it was a different matter to experience it in person. It made me realize just how important the memory of la deuxieme guerre remains today for France.

Here is the reportage if you are interested.

This is a reason why I like working at the radio - I have encountered people, and situations, that I would never otherwise come across. Coming up next: What racehorses eat before big competitions...