‘Whichever way a man may turn,
his eyes alight upon Libourne.’

— Onésime Reclus, Le Partage du monde

11 December

Needless to say, I have resolved to name this place the Savage Mind.
     I arrived two hours ago. I don’t yet know quite what I’m going to write in this journal, except, well, impressions and notes that will represent an important part of my thesis. My ethnographer’s jotter. My field notebook. I took a taxi from Niort train station (heading north-north-west, fifteen kilometres, a small fortune). To the right of the ­road, flat open country, boundless fields, no hedgerows, a little cheerless in the gathering dusk. To the left, we were skirting the dark shadows of marshland, or that, at least, is how it seemed to me. The driver had a hell of a time finding the address, even using GPS. (Coordinates for the Savage Mind: 46°25’, 4’N 0°31’ 29,3’W.) Eventually, he pulled into a farmyard, a dog began to bark, I was here. The owner (sixty, smiling) is called Mathilde. I took possession of the premises. My house (my apartment?) is, in fact, the rear ground floor area of the main farmhouse. The windows look out over the garden and the kitchen garden. To the right, I have a view of the church; to the left, a field (I don’t know what is growing in it – lucerne? I often assume that all fields of green low-growing crops are lucerne) and, opposite, rows of what I suspect are radishes or cabbages. A bedroom, a kitchen-living room, a bathroom, that’s all, but it’s more than enough. My feelings, when Madame Mathilde said, Well, there you go, this is your place, were mixed. Simultaneously happy to finally be in the field and a little anxious. I rushed to my laptop to make sure the Wi-Fi worked, using my article for Études et perspectives as a pretext. I was only duping myself; there was nothing urgent. I mostly sent some messages and chatted with Lara. I went to bed early, re-read a few pages of Malinowski and, in the darkness, was keenly aware of the aural environment. The muffled hum of some contraption in the distance (the boiler?), from time to time an even more distant car. Then I went to sleep on an empty stomach.

12 December

First day acclimatizing to my new terrain. La Pierre-Saint-Christophe marks the centre of a triangle whose vertices are Saint-Maxire, Villiers-en-Plaine and Faye-sur-Ardin. So many fantastical names that give substance to my New World. Fifteen kilometres from Niort, ten from Coulonges-sur-l’Autize.
     I left the Savage Mind shortly before 10 a.m., having realized that I was not alone in my ethnographer’s quarters: there is a plethora of fauna. Doubtless, the toad is drawn by the countless insects and the cats by the toad. In the bathroom, equidistant from the shower and the toilet, is a colony of red worms, or rather living red filaments that look like worms. Quite cute, as long as you don’t step on them. They slowly slither towards the door, so you have to spray them down the plughole before taking a shower. I easily managed to overcome my disgust, which is a re- assuring sign for my ability to deal with the difficulties of fieldwork. After all, even Malinowski notes that insects and reptiles are the principal obstacles to the work of the ethnologist. (Since no-one will read this diary, I might as well admit that I was disgusted at the thought of worms in the bathroom and it was fifteen minutes before I steeled myself to take a shower.) There is also a handsome drove of dwarf snails, which is harmless enough. I assume that the humidity, together with being at garden level, are mostly to blame. So, anyway, I left the Savage Mind at around ten o’clock and went to see my landlady, Madame Mathilde, to ask if there was some way of getting into town so I could stock up the larder, she looked tremendously surprised, Well, now, I’ve no idea, she had no idea, she did not know whether there was a bus service to the village. (Today, I discovered that it’s possible to take the early morning school bus, but I’d looked like a dirty old man and besides, I would have to wait a good two hours for the supermarket to open, something to note in the chapter Transport.) She immediately advised me to buy a car: in La Pierre-Saint-Christophe, there is nothing except a café that sells basic essentials like fishhooks, cigarettes and fishing permits. But at least I will not have to fish for my breakfast: Madame Mathilde (or rather her husband, Gary, keen to be interviewed) was kind enough to lend me an old moped belonging to one of their children (note for the chapter Transport) and an old black helmet with no visor and threadbare padding decorated with a few vintage stickers (a frog sticking its tongue out, and AC/DC logo). As a result, I have a somewhat precarious but efficient means of locomotion. Towards midday, I went to the supermarket in the county town, Coulonges-sur-l’Autize (pretty name), and bought lots of things before it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be easy to carry them on a moped: tins of tuna and sardines, frozen pizzas, coffee, a little something sweet (chocolate). Departmental road (number something or other) twists and turns on its way to the town, crossing quite a wide river. (The Autize?) A market, a post office, a church, a small château, two boulangeries, as many pharmacies, a clothes shop, three cafés, there’s not much to see. I bought a newspaper in order to look nonchalant in the Bar des Sports and drank tea while eavesdropping on conversations, my way of connecting with the place. The local dialect (officially Poitevin Saintongeais – I wouldn’t like to offend anyone) is probably dying (but let’s not get ahead of ourselves: chapter Tongues, lovely title). I hope to have more luck at the market. After my tea I headed back to the Savage Mind; thanks to a stray dog, on a hairpin bend I almost totalled the moped (there’s a sentence I never thought I would write) and crashed into a low wall but, by some miracle, I managed to right the bike in time. Then I went over my work schedule. La Pierre-Saint-Christophe has six hundred and forty-nine inhabitants, according to the latest municipal census. Two hundred and eighty hearths, as old timers would say. The demonym, according to Wikipedia and the Mayoral website, is Petrochristophorian. Esteemed Petrochristophorians, ladies and gentlemen, I have decided (chapter: Questions) to conduct about a hundred interviews from among your number, choosing interviewees such that, by the end, I will have equal numbers for each gender and age bracket. This seems to me, empirically, a good idea. A year’s work subdivided into two six-month campaigns. Great. I feel full of energy. I skimmed though the rough draft of my article for Living Rural Lives and immediately had my first intuition. Evidently, working in the countryside suits me. 

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