The newsletter of Fluquière-les-Prés has added a letters page titled "Your Voice, Loudly", intended to raise engagement with the publication. Residents have responded by staging a public disagreement in the square each morning before nine, so that there is something to write in about.

The section, which appears on page four between the flower show results and a notice about drains, prints correspondence on any subject provided it is submitted in the form of a grievance. The editor, Mrs Odile Tramasset, said the previous letters page had struggled because nobody wished to correspond calmly.

"Before, I would get the occasional letter about the war memorial paving, and it was polite, so it did not perform," she said. "Now people are angry by eight and posting by ten. My printer says business has never been better."

The morning quarrels

The disagreements follow a loose rota. On Tuesday the square hosted a dispute over whose hanging baskets were encroaching on whose wall, conducted at a volume calculated to be audible from the bakery. On Thursday two retired teachers argued about a bench, and on Friday a man stood alone shouting at a fountain until enough witnesses had gathered for the letters to be worth writing.

One participant, Mr Gervais Loubet, said he and his neighbour had agreed to fall out over a hedge every second week, alternating who was in the wrong. "We were not speaking anyway," he said. "This way it goes somewhere."

A younger resident, Miss Pauline Vasseur, was observed starting a quarrel alone and then, when nobody engaged, returning the following morning with a sister-in-law hired for the purpose. The exchange ran for eleven minutes and produced four letters, including one from both participants, filed under different names.

The response

Mrs Tramasset said the section now occupies more of the newsletter than the news, and that this was the point of a news publication. She has applied for a regional award for community participation and expects the judging panel to visit during a quarrel, which she has scheduled for their convenience.

The vicar, the Reverend Bonaventure Escande, said the church had begun receiving confession letters that were clearly drafts of newsletter correspondence. He said he now reads them twice, once for the penance and once for the engagement.

Next month the newsletter will add a poll asking residents which feud they would like to see continued. Mrs Tramasset said the poll itself was expected to generate a feud, which would then be covered by the poll.