A Blot on the Landscape

In the frozen north of the Deux-Sèvres lies the picturesque town of Airvault, a Petite Cité de Caractère no less! But on the edge of this town the ground shakes as a behemoth awakens. 

The ageing cement works, after 103 years, is having an upgrade; a new, all singing, all dancing, environmentally friendly, cement producing machine is being built (the local disused railway lines have been reopened to transport the grey stuff around the world), producing less CO2 emissions and cutting water consumption. Now I'm all for progress, but like a mythological Greek Titan pushing its way out of the earth it rises above the skyline and can be seen for miles around (I can see it at the bottom of our road and Airvault is 9 miles away). 

People get their knickers in a twist about wind turbines, but their graceful turning, I find, has a certain charm. The structure that is being constructed to house the furnace at Airvault is like the Great Eye of Mordor casting a shadow across the Deux-Sèvres landscape. 

As I say, I see myself as a man of progress; I embrace new technology, am open to new ideas...okay we don't have an air fryer but we do have a pasta machine (which we don't use), I don't have a Fitbit either because I don't want Vladimir Putin knowing what I'm thinking. But technology can seem more of a hinderance than a help in our lives. My car has a myriad of buttons and knobs on the dashboard and steering wheel which I haven't got a clue what they're for... and it's a Dacia Sandero! 

My motto 'keep it simple'. If I had a coat of arms that would be on the bottom. Life has become so complicated; everything requires a password (but you shouldn't have the same one and mustn't write it down). I'm not a savant! I struggle to remember my four digit pin number let alone numerous passwords made up of numbers, punctuation and capital letters. I can't even remember how old I am some days.

I used to work in a school designed by Norman Foster, costing millions of pounds (the roof leaked) and the technology and resources were amazing: computers everywhere, interactive whiteboards, swipe card registration, etc. it was like an enormous spaceship with 2200 pupils. The swipe cards didn't work from day one, the IT system was constantly crashing, the keyboards broke and the teaching hampered by students on their mobile phones. Progress? 

Like so many we moved to France for the slower pace of life, better weather and cheap booze. Our French farmhouse doesn't have any mod cons like central heating or a damp course, but it has charm, character, woodworm, a musty smell and a strange damp patch which appears every now and then in the under stair cupboard. 

Our cooking is reliant on a gas bottle hidden behind a cupboard (this usually runs out when cooking Christmas dinner or for local dignitaries). 

You know where you are with a log burner, what's to go wrong? You chuck in wood and start a fire, Bob's your uncle. Okay they're carcinogenic, pollute the atmosphere, our house is freezing and in winter our clothes smell of mildew and we can see our breath in bed, but we don't have to worry about thermostats, tariffs or bleeding radiators.

We don't have a voice recognition device either. 'Alexa make me a cup of tea', 'Alexa what's the weather like in Guatamala?', 'Alexa play Billy Don't Be a Hero by Paper Lace'...I don't know how we manage. With AI taking over every aspect of our lives we won't have anything to do; just sit on the sofa, over eat, enjoy the cheap booze and stick our fingers in our belly buttons. 

With all these advances in technology you would have thought they would know how to dig a big hole and put the Airvault blast furnace in it! 

Listen to me getting all worked up. Calm Stephen, calm. I shall have to lie down in a dark room and light a scented candle. 'Alexa play Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel'. 

Photo: only slightly shorter than the Burj Khalifa, the new cement works in Airvault.