IF you read last month’s letter from you know where, you may remember me saying that we Beans, though in many ways an admirable race of course, were not best known for showering indiscriminate largesse on all and sundry. Rather the opposite, in fact.

But one Jersey yachtsman pottering up the Rance to the port here in Dinan reminded me rather sharply the other day that Jersey’s Overseas Aid Commission does in fact donate more than £8 million in aid every year, not to mention loads of other charitable initiatives, both collective and individual.

And anyway, he had always found that your Breton was as close to his sous as the next man, so as someone who has long since gone native here, maybe I should sweep in front of my own door, as the French say. Mind you, he did have a particularly annoying bee in his bonnet at the time.

Yes, the day before, he had moored overnight in Saint-Quay-Portrieux, which is an hour or so west of St Malo, in Donald Campbell’s Bluebird anyway, and was dismayed to discover that the 25 euro fee didn’t include access to a shower.
No, that was a coin-in-the-slot two euros extra, which is not what you want to hear when you’ve just battled through Biblical seas, shivering every timber, and haven’t got any change in your sodden oilskins.

Worse still, the time was strictly metered, so he had one minute to get his togs off, five to sluice himself down and two more to get dressed again and out.

A bit ironical, really, for a country where the expression ‘une douche écossaise’ – a Scottish shower, where, it’s alleged, the hot water suddenly turns icy on you – is used figuratively to describe any situation where things go wrong unexpectedly.
Showers are free and unlimited in British ports, apparently, not that I’d know because I’ve never been able to interest Mme Masstairmann in sailing.

The sea may be in her Breton blood, but she served her maritime apprenticeship as a mere child in her native Finistère under a Captain Birdseye uncle who was fond of telling his nervous juvenile crew – none of her adult relatives were daft enough to go out with him – that that dark smudge at one metre on the depth sounder thingy was only a school of mackerel …. kerrunch!

And you thought The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was pretty hairy.

She still ‘humphs’ derisively whenever she hears the words pleasure and boating in the same sentence.

No, you might curse her for a dullard, but La Patronne just can’t see the poetry of getting bounced about in an ocean-going caravan while her insides do their full
Vesuvius number.

Mind you, she does love the rough-and-tumble of the zippier nauti-sports, and we did some neat boogie-boarding in glassy six-foot surf down near Biarritz this summer.

ANYWAY, are Bretons really misers then? Well, the French will tell you they have sea urchins in their pockets, but the region was relatively poor up till about 1950 so it was difficult to splash the cash if you didn’t have two centimes to rub together ,and the old mind-sets die hard.

Maybe that’s why they have a soft spot for Jérôme Kerviel, the now disgraced local-lad-done-great golden boy trader, whose headlong rush into ever hotter financial waters finally cost his employers, the Société Générale bank, a whopping five billion euros.

Things are easier today, but they’re still national champions for personal savings, the average inhabitant having 7,200 euros squirreled away. More than half of them own their own homes, too, and that’s unlikely to change in these economically troubled times.

That said, the property market here has gone quiet over the last few years, particularly in central Brittany, where most houses sell for about 115,000 euros, but prices are still rising slowly but surely near the sea.

The average place in the pricey St Malo-Dinard area currently costs about 250,000 euros, but that figure ebbs gradually to 150,000 as you move away along the north coast towards Brest and then rises steadily again to 290,000 as you follow the south coast back along to the Golfe du Morbihan.

MIND you, with the pound still distinctly anaemic, the once steady stream of buyers from your side of the Channel, be they Brit or Bean, has receded to a trickle.

We’ve still had quite a few tourists around, though, despite the dodgy weather, and indoor attractions like museums, cultural events and the Grand Aquarium in St Malo have reported record takings.

Mind you, some of our churches and cathedrals were less than happy with the influx of chattering trippers in sun-hats, eating sandwiches and smoking, their mobile phone jingles punctuating the calm, with some visitors not even realising that a service was in progress as they lined up a pretty picture to be entitled, at a guess: ‘This is Josette and the kids in front of this really cool altar.’

The priest at the abbey just down the road was sad rather than angry, feeling that the misbehavers weren’t being deliberately disrespectful, but that they often lacked any religious culture or recognition that the place was sacred; and maybe they lacked just a bit of simple common sense, too.

IN the old quarter here in Dinan, the tourists deserting the chilly beaches could always stop and listen to Alain Salaver grinding away on his traditional Breton hurdy-gurdy with a hat on the pavement at his feet for any appreciative pieces of silver you might care to lob in.

Well, for a few minutes they could, anyway, because his ‘vielleux’ is rather monotonous and piercingly shrill, too. I walk past him on my way home from work every day and much as we all like local colour, a little bit of Alan goes a long way, believe you me.

So it’s hardly surprising that the quarter’s residents and shopkeepers are pulling their hair out because they have to put up with him from morning till night. Some of them are just about ready to lynch him with his own strings. One grumpily kicked his hat away, another threw a bucket of water over him, and a ‘Salaver out!’ petition is doing the rounds.

The police have received about a dozen complaints, but apart from a quiet word in his ear, their hands are tied because he isn’t actually doing anything illegal. The mayor even rushed through a by-law to force street musicians to move on after 20 minutes and ban them completely outside July and August, all to no avail. He just coughs up the 11 euro fine and grinds on.

Well, your Breton’s nothing if not stubborn, you see, and Alan’s cried Haro! accusing the town hall of cultural censorship. But the wheels of justice trundle exceedingly slowly in France – they’ve been condemned and convicted several times by the European courts for the tardiness of their judgments – so in the meantime he is thinking of renting a small shop or ground-floor room in one of the more touristy medieval streets and playing his heart out on his own doorstep.

Anyway, if you’re ever strolling around under the arches in the Place des Cordeliers or passing the clock tower in the Rue de l’Horloge, you might just like to slip him a euro or two and strike another blow for Jersey’s unsung generosity, eh!
Kenavo!