We didn’t see you at the recent annual Vin d’Amitie at the village hall. We can only assume that you didn’t know there was free drink involved (quite an agreeable rosé méthode champènoise, as it happens).

You may not even know what the Vin d’Amitie is. For the uninitiated, it’s an evening ‘do’ early in January where the mayor stands up and tells everyone how great last year was and how this year’s going to be even better thanks to the unceasing efforts of him and his team (to be fair, they do a pretty good job).

There again, perhaps you do know and that’s why you stayed away. But you still missed the pink fizz.

It might be worth giving it a try next year, though, because the mayor is definitely speeding up. Five years ago, he went on for about three-quarters of an hour; he’s got it down to about fifteen minutes now.

Or maybe he’s just not doing so much. That he wants to let on about, at any rate.

To be honest, we can’t recall a great deal of what he said. However, he did wave around the annual ‘Bulletin Municipal’ of Cauchemar-sur-Orme (reminder: that’s the ‘super commune’) of us and that lot in Baisetout).

You know – the glossy brochure that you found in your postbox just before Christmas. The one that nobody ever looks at but keeps on the side anyway because it’s got the opening hours of the Post Office in it. Somewhere.

Now – and if this doesn’t demonstrate our commitment to the cause of keeping the expat community better-informed about life in Faire-Le-Dodo (87), we don’t know what does – we’ve read it. Which means you don’t have to.

As if you were going to anyway.

And here are a few interesting and useful facts that we learned from this perusal:

– Just under 20% of the local population is aged 75 or over – that’s about twice the national average. Most of them will be ahead of you at the counter in La Petite Superette et Salon de Thé when you pop in for your baguette and the Radio Times.

On the positive side, if you make it to that age yourself you get a free lunch once a year; albeit only the standard seven courses. Plus all the wine you can respectably neck, of course.

This interesting demographic fact could also explain why M Enterrezles of the local Pompes Funèbres lives in such a big house.

– The local Chasse seems to have had a productive (if that’s the right word) year. According to the Bulletin Municipal, the 38 members managed to get through the following impressive list of victims:

• 30 sangliers
• 17 roe deer
• 16 foxes
• 4 martens (good; they’re evil bastards)
• 21 coypu (why? They’re cute)

We would suggest that the moral of this story is that, should you ever contemplate going to a fancy-dress party dressed as a sanglier you have a rapid rethink.

– On a similar note, if, for whatever reason, you find yourself strolling around that big patch of open ground outside the village hall at an ungodly hour on either the second or fourth Monday of the month, under no circumstances do so while wearing a woolly jumper.

It’s not called the Marché des Ovines for nothing and you surely wouldn’t want to have become the 6,257th sheep to be traded in 2017 would you?