This month, we moved from a spot on the edge of this little town to one just a few steps from the heart of it.
Only then did we finally figure out that a town of 700 people has not one but two bells tolling on the hour and half hour.
And, not unlike the opening phrases of Dueling Banjos, a tune made popular in the 1972 movie Deliverance, … one clock strikes, and then the other responds.
Yes, it is confusing.
It must be hell, counting down the seconds on New Year’s Eve.
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Six months ago, I had never heard of Clermont-Ferrand. Which probably left me in the overwhelming majority of people living in Europe.
But the notion of it began to grow on me, and today we spent six hours in a car to drive the 190 miles or so to Clermont-Ferrand and back.
Our first major road trip, since we arrived in France.
What prompted the visit?
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A visitor would never guess that in this part of small-town France, swimming pools are a common feature in the backyard.
If a house has a backyard, or a courtyard, the odds are good it will have a pool. Often one of those above-ground things, sometimes, but quite a few old-fashioned, dug-into-the-ground pools. For cooling off in the summer. For swimming a few laps.
But you rarely see the pools, from the street. Like other Latin societies, the French turn their back to the outside world, presenting often dreary walls, shutters and gates.
Inside, however, are all sorts of things, even in modest towns like this one. Gardens. Barbecues.
Swimming pools.
But you would never know about the water out back — unless, perhaps, you had spent your life in the town and understood the often complicated layouts of the houses here — and knew where all the pools are.
Which is how you apparently decided to sample a few of them on the edge of town — when no one was home.
Curious behavior, and it has produced our only little small-town mystery.
Who are the kids climbing walls and sampling swimming pools that don’t belong to them?
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And we thought drunken thugs clashing around a soccer match was an sight that had been relegated to history.
Not when England is involved, especially overseas. Especially in France. Especially in Marseille.
English louts who reportedly had been drinking all day attacked/were attacked/counter-attacked in an atmosphere of beer-fueled chaos near the Old Port of France’s second city as the European Championship opened in Paris.
It reminded more than a few of us, of an age to remember, the so-called Battle of Marseille between England fans and Tunisia fans, which also brought chaos to France’s biggest southern city, at the 1998 World Cup.
This is still unfolding, but the photos from the scene, and the reports of clashes between Russian fans and England fans, and perhaps some France fans, too, make for extraordinary viewing.
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All these years after soccer made a breakthrough in the United States, and I’m still not sure American fans appreciate the significance of the Uefa European Championship.
The World Cup is the planet’s biggest tournament.
The Euros are No. 2.
I suppose No. 3 would be the Copa America, which is going on in the U.S. at this moment. But the Copa is a significant distance behind the Euros, in terms of level of competition as well as level of global interest.
Why should that be?
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It was a teeny bit like the Retired Anglophones French Chateau Languedocienne Woodstock.
Music, alcohol, cars parked on every spot not previously occupied by a vine … essentially a farm with no neighbors to complain about the noise … and lots and of gray-white-and-blue hair.
It was quite the success as hundreds of people seemed to have a very fine time, even as the long French sunset finally went dark at the Chateau de Montpezat just outside the city of Pezenas.
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It took him three tries, but Julio Urias finally looked like he belongs in the major leagues.
The 19-year-old left-hander, ranked one of baseball’s top prospects, gave up one run in four innings and racked up seven strikeouts in a game the Dodgers won over the Colorado Rockies 4-3, on Trayce Thompson’s ninth-inning home run.
Granted, it was Urias’s third try against Major League hitters, and first success, but perhaps this is what he is really about.
And maybe he can help build a bridge for the team until it finds some veteran pitching help with the aid of those Time Warner Cable billions.
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It is a great job: Recording the highs and lows of a Volvo Ocean Race sailing team during a nine-month circumnavigation of the planet.
It is a horrific job: During the 40,000 or so nautical miles of the journey, the onboard VOR reporter will encounter heaving seas, deep cold, blistering heat and the spartan living arrangements of a 65-foot boat.
It has been called “the toughest job in sports media”, and it has to be.
And now organizers of the 2017-18 edition of the race are looking for people who would like to be an onboard reporter for one of the competing boats.
The call to the sea comes in this linked video, which you ought to watch, entitled, “If you died tomorrow …”
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In sports, a lot of bad trades become bad trades after the fact.
The Dodgers’ nine-player trade with the Boston Red Sox in August of 2012 was a bad trade from Day 1.
The Dodgers did the Red Sox a huge favor (and themselves a huge disservice) in the heart of the infamous deal — obtaining Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett — and taking on about $260 million in contracts for three guys on the back sides (in two cases, way on the back sides) of their careers.
The Dodgers got 35 starts and a tick over 200 mediocre innings from Beckett before he retired, following the 2014 season.
Crawford, now 34, was a bigger bust — a once-great player in Tampa Bay who had struggled for the Red Sox following their late 2010 signing binge, and who continued to struggle in Los Angeles, where the Dodgers rarely had room for him in their outfield — especially when he flat-lined as a competent ballplayer.
The club designated him for assignment today. Released him, that is.
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Sometimes I feel I’m at the far end of the Jurgen Klinsmann must go spectrum.
I believe the German coach of the U.S. national team is an ongoing disaster who is actively making the team worse by denigrating American players and the country’s domestic league … and who continues to bring in faux Yanks, insta-Yanks, especially from Germany, to man many positions in the first XI.
And I believe Klinsmann should be dismissed … yesterday. But not everyone seems as concerned about this as I am.
So, it was a bit fun to run across a writer who seems at least as agitated that Klinsmann is still hanging around, doing a whole lot of nothing.
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