Have More Kids | Jerm Warfare Weekly Banter

**Jerm** (0:30)
My name is Jerm, this is Jerm Warfare, the Battle of Ideas. Oh man, it's nice to be back in the company of both of you gents. Mike, it was very hard work with just Charles.

**Charles** (0:47)
That's it, well done. Never near the absolute truth. Yeah, wasn't that Jerm?

**Jerm** (0:54)
No, I'm kidding, it's easy. It's way too easy. Mike, I'll cut this out if you don't want me to say so, but I know that you were in France and particularly in the south, and I was just saying a moment ago that I've also been to the south of France, and I really, really enjoyed that part of France. It's beautiful.

**Mike** (1:13)
France is a bit like England in some ways, in the sense that there's like a line you draw about halfway down when you flip it. So the traditional view of the English is that they're warmer and friendlier in the north and a bit more standoffish and whatnot in the south. It's quite the opposite in France. Northern France is a lot more strict and a lot more conventional and the south is... And there's historic reasons for this. So we have a house that we've had in the south of France since early 2000s and such a small place. It's not that exciting, so don't anybody think it's some kind of chateau or something. But no, we're just at the very southern end of the Massif Central and that's just on the northern end of what would be considered Cathar country. And so there's a huge amount of history there. And but as well as that, a very different attitude to life. And people in that part of France absolutely stick their fingers up much more strongly at bureaucracy and whatnot. And there's a lot more sort of community. And so in the north, for example, farming is much more industrialized. And so if you want to buy food in the north, you got to go to the supermarket in the south. You just stop in at any farm and they'll sell you whatever you want. It is, it's sort of exact, exactly the way we would like to be doing things here in England in that sense. So, you know, the food is fantastic. The quality of the food is fantastic. It's mostly organic and it's not expensive relative to the UK either.
The only thing that I noticed that has really changed because I haven't been there for quite a few years now. But the one thing that we did notice has changed significantly is the price of fuel. So France was, it was always, you know, quite a bit cheaper to drive in France than it was in the UK. That has changed and it's actually more expensive there now.
But, you know, very, very warm, very, very dry. People were concerned about how dry things were because those mountains are very wooded and the woods basically come right up to your door basically. So, you know, the concerns about fires were were absolutely there.
A couple of really significant thunderstorms. I mean, thunderstorms in that region are always good fun because you just don't get thunder like that in the UK.
But I mean, I sent Charles a video clip of one of the thunderstorms that we had. And actually, I've never seen wind like it in that place, but actually about two hours south of that, there was a village just completely wiped out by a tornado on that same afternoon. So, and we drove past that on the way to, on one of our little trips that we took while we were there, we drove down to Renle Chateau. But yeah, fascinating.
They had a very different experience of the whole COVID thing than the rest of us, because it basically didn't affect people there at all, much in terms of, you know, the other word. The French government had issued lockdown directives and whatnot, but mostly that didn't affect anyone.

**Jerm** (5:21)
I found that to be the case here too, where you go more into the countryside, the more traditional sort of historical parts of, you know, a particular region, they seem to have exactly the same outlook as what you're describing. I wonder if that's perhaps just something that just is the case. And the closer you go to a city or the urbanization, perhaps the more compliant and obedient you become.

**Mike** (5:50)
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, there are a couple of big cities to lose, Carcassonne, Narbonne, Bézier. I've never really spent any time in those cities, so I don't really know what they're like.

**Jerm** (6:02)
Abington-Nobon, and Bézier.

**Mike** (6:04)
Yeah.