Walter can’t get into this bar.
Small french villages are often depopulated when youngsters grow up and look for work in the big cities. Big box stores and supermarkets make it easy to buy your groceries and hardware in out-of-the town industrial estates, so the beautiful centuries-old centers of town are left sad and empty. This is not good.
Some towns have resorted to putting up paintings of traditional butchers and bakers and cafes in the windows of the old stores. While the paintings themselves are beautifully done, the symbolism is forlorn. Instead of trying to revitalize the local economy, they are falling back on images of the past.
France is known to be a high-tax society. In return you get free education; free or cheap excellent healthcare; and a generous pension. But on the ground it’s difficult for small businesses to stay in business with such an onerous and complicated tax requirement. The cost of employing people can be prohibitive and couples often open a small business and instead of employing more workers, will toil fourteen hours a day to keep the enterprise afloat.
Surely there is a better way. Perhaps some creative thinking could create a scheme where tiny businesses could catch a break and allow the economic centers of French towns to chug along and revitalize the life of the villages?
These small villages are lovely. All they need is more activity. Even if it means, for once, that art is not the answer. Just a thought. Lmc
This is article is taken from Living & Painting in France, my monthly newsletter/magazine that talks about my life in rural Brittany as an expat artist. Click here for your subscription. It’s free!