Inspection: Part I

 The Magnanerie, Bonbonne, and Rock Outcrop at Malérargues

Two days ago, 1 June, was the Centre’s follow-up inspection for safety, particularly fire-code safety. Malérargues had failed the inspection in March 2009 and had to cease all public performances. The previous administrators had not done the work required to keep the place up to code, and had not informed either the new Director or the Association President about the violations from 1998. We were only allowed to give courses here through the permission of the mayor of Thoiras. In France the ultimate responsibility for public safety is in the hands of the local elected government backed up by the French Republic and their centralized rules and regulations. A French safety inspection is something I do not believe most Americans ever experience in France. They are much more likely to crash into a great bottle of red wine in a restaurant that never gets exported to the US, like the great  Roc d’Anglade from here in the Gard, than go toe to toe over fire extinguishers or alarm systems with a French major from the National Fire Department. Yes, the French give their firemen rank just as they give medals to mothers for having babies and to Union officials for I do not know what (strikes?).

In anyway, you should know, that to help prepare the Centre for this inspection, a month ago I went to the small, French southern city of Béziers to take a course in fire and health safety for theatres. I passed it, and with my new knowledge of French law and regulations, I have been readying the Centre for the inspection over the last month. So, I have been putting up hot little red signs above big red fire extinguishers throughout the Centre, cleaning out the stuff people tend to want to store in common areas (then leave here and never reappear), the garage, ancient cellars, and nooks and crannies; i.e. a broken drum that no one claims stuck under the theatre’s seating but no one dares throw out. Yet most of my time has been spent with a chainsaw and clippers clearing brush and small trees that have grown up around the theatre especially in the outside area near the boiler and electrical room and around the outside of a large, white, gaz storage tank. In French these are called either a bonbonne—close to bonbon, French for candy—or a sausage. The one we have is identical to the one shot and blown up by Matt Damon in the first Bourne movie. Ours is perched on a piece of the granite outcrop on which the present theatre building, called the Magnanerie, was built in the 19th century as a silk factory. Brush tends to grow under and around our bonbonne and is nicely shaded by a French evergreen oak.

The Centre's Bonbonne; area cleared

The Magnanerie—another view

I found myself clinging on the side of this granite outcrop just a couple of days ago trying to cut the last difficult bits of brush around the bonbonne when I came eye to eye with one of the small vipers found in the Cévennes. I then noticed a tail nearby not connected to the snake I was eyeballing. I didn’t panic but understood that I had just probably come into a nest of snakes and was balancing myself on a rock with not much to grab onto. I had just cut away my brush hand-holds and did not have a safety rope tied on. I could easily fall—the drop was about 20 feet—and if I did, I probably would have broken something. Instead, I slowly, without breathing or oozing panic, moved along the cliff back to my ladder. At that point I decided that this brush clearing would have to be good enough for the Fireman Major at the upcoming inspection, and I really needed to get back to the office to finish the required pre-inspection report (called the Document unique).

So, at 1600 hours or 4pm the inspectors arrive. The first thing they do is not park in one of the two parking lots but come right up to the theatre and park where I have just recently put up the required signs prohibiting parking, because the drive area in front of the theatre is a fire exit. I can’t understand this, except to think they must figure they are the ones entitled or that the signs they insist go up don’t apply to them but are for them. All the inspectors look healthy, except the Building inspector who has an enormous stomach like the ones seen in old agit-prop cartoons characaturing capitalists. I imagine him to be a good socialist bureaucrat in his life-time job checking concrete. Actually, he was mostly silent and pleasant as were the majority of this inspection gaggle (seven of them—a French government official, his assistant, the Fireman Major, his secretary, a local policeman, a mayor’s representative, and a building inspector) with the exception, this time, of the Fireman Major.

The Boiler Room (left) and Electical Hut Area (front)

Last time, the Fireman Major was pleasant and helpful, even accomodating. This time he was contradictory, confusing, picky, and shaming. When I approached the inspectors gathering in front of the office, I noticed the Major was missing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him coming from the direction of the boiler room and electrical hut area I had meticulously cleaned. Last time he and the French government representative were pissed when they saw the mess that had grown up there in brush, trees, old pipes, rotting wood, old stacked beams, stove wood, piles of stone, a compost pile and box, and a couple of rags hung on a clothesline obviously still in use run right over the gaz bonbonne and near the gaz pipes. I, too, felt embarrassed by the mess, which had accumulated from residents over the years. I had cleaned that space with Malérargues' handyman and gardener, Roland, leaving nothing but two trimmed hedges of laurel and lilac at a safe distance from the gaz tank. Also the access to the space was cleared of any obstructions like big flower pots, which tend to mysteriously appear in the path, and old stumps, weeds, broken glass, and stones.

 The back area of the Magnanerie cleaned and cleared

However, the Fireman Major was not smiling, and he was not impressed when I announced I had passed a fire safety course since the last time he was here. In fact he raised an eye in a kind of dismissive way similar to West Pointers who sneer at other officers who got their commissions in 90 days at Officer Candidate School. Well, okay, the last time the inspection was in the morning. This one was in the afternoon. Maybe this Major is a morning person? In anyway, I felt the next two hours were going to be long and tense.

They were.

© 2010 J. Livernois