23 June 2009

After our hectic period of music and visitors, we were delighted to come away for a week to our old twin area the Diois to stay in a chalet on a campsite near Châtillon.  This is the view from our veranda (a real veranda with a roof but no sides - the French use the word often to mean 'conservatory').

We arrived in glorious weather for the wedding of Jérôme Poulalier in Châtillon.  The ceremony in the Mairie was a stately affair, more so because everything was translated into German as well - J lives and works in Frankfurt where he met his bride Lykaya.  Afterwards there was a village apéritif in the old square and later a lovely meal in a restaurant.  The young people, French and German, who had organised the proceedings had planned a variety of entertainments and souvenirs so in between eating and drinking there was plenty to catch the attention.  We got to bed (long before the end of the party) at 1.30!

The next three days were spent quietly round the camp site, watching butterflies in the field in front of our chalet, wandering to the pool for a swim, with occasional short trips out to visit Châtillon or to taste wine in St Roman.  Our friends Wendy and David joined us for the week so we were glad of warm weather to be able to sit outside what would otherwise have been a rather crowded living space.  And we talked a lot about life, family and friends.  We went wine tasting (see wine diary) and we also welcomed our old friend Colette for lunch and enjoyed a leisurely meal of melon, pasta, cheese and dessert au pré.

For the next couple of days we went out to see the countryside of the Vercors, visiting Die market and the village of Châtillon en route first for the memorial to the Resistance and then to the Vallon de Combau.  The story of the Resistance in the area is moving and grim - a small army of peasant fighters waiting their moment in 1944, inspired by the Normandy landings to declare a free Vercors, waiting expectantly for Allied planes and seeing suddenly the black crosses of the Luftwaffe.  SS parachutists and gliders landed and massacred hundreds.  Our early days f twinning with Die were coloured by some residual resentment of the British for not coming in time to save the local resistance fighters, though luckily this was not an overriding sentiment.  The Memorial, dating from the 50th anniversary in 1994, is in a magnificently scenic eyrie on the side of the valley above the plain of Vassieux, the last stronghold.  It is a sombre multimedia presentation of the story with plenty of oral testimony and period photos and film.  We didn't stop at the separate museum in the village itself, but there is undoubtedly more to see and learn.

The drive up to the Combau valley is as long and convoluted as that to the Resistance memorial, climbing to about 1500 metres through dramatic scenery whose full majesty was only really revealed as we descended.  After the climb you drive more gently upwards through the high valley and, at the end of the road, in a little roadside car park, you find yourself among steep meadows of wild flowers.  This was the right time to visit, and we climbed as high as our various knees and fitness levels allowed, with the mountain landscape slowly unfolding as we climbed.  The flowers were simply breathtaking.

In the midst of this we'd invited friends for apéros at the campsite restaurant, which we found very good throughout the week.  Ali and Christine Benyahya from nearby Saint Roman came, and the newlyweds Jérôme and Lykaya Poulalier stayed on for a meal with us.  For the rest of the week we looked round markets in Die and Châtillon and welcomed another friend Krys Pochin for a meal.  On the final evening there was a brief flurry of rain and a rainbow, pictured here in front of the Glandasse.  Mary and I drove back across the mountains to Orange on quiet roads in still sunny weather and began to feel the force of the Mistral as we crossed the Rhône valley.  It has been with us here in the Languedoc ever since, adding to the heat in drying everything out.

3 June 2009

One of the extraordinary sights in the garden in the past  month has been of dragonflies alighting on clothes pegs on the washing lines.  It has been a hot month but for a couple of short heavy bursts of rain, and we've enjoyed sitting on the terrace and smelling the jasmine whenever we have had time.  But it has also been a busy and exciting time especially for our musical life, culminating in a Haydn concert on 30 May with Jon's choir Crème Franglaise joined by nearly 20 other singers from England and a scratch orchestra in which Mary played 'cello.  She had the most demanding time because she's also the choir's accompanist; Jon had been struggling with a sore throat (in fact, 'kissing nodules' on the vocal cords, far less romantic than they sound, but luckily curable with rest) so could not sing much, but he was busy with all the practical organisation as choir secretary.  The concert was an outstanding success, with an audience of nearly 200 in the church in Lunel - the sounds of the orchestra and choir still echo in our heads.  It was the weekend of the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death and we performed 3 works - the Te Deum in C, the Little Organ Mass and finally the Harmoniemesse.

So last weekend we had 5 singers staying with us as B&B guests, and in fact we've also had a steady trickle of B&B bookings this summer, with more to come over the next couple of months.  We enjoy the variety of interesting people we meet - pilgrims, holiday-makers, people returning to Lunel to visit friends, and of course the musicians I've mentioned.  In our little street there have also been excitements such as the triumph of the Lunel girls' basketball team which includes our neighbour Christine's daughter Chloë (Chris is on the left acting as cheerleader!)

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2 May 2009

May is such a magical month with flowers in garden and countryside, colours and scents all around.  The other day I was up the ladder dutting the pine hedge and my head was almost buried in next door's philadelphus (mock orange); even on the ground its scent washes over you every time you go out on a warm afternoon.  Yesterday we were in Fontanès for the festival of horses, this year combined with a Spanish theme because the village has twinned with one in Spain - photos now listed with the galleries on the photography page.  A busy month for public holidays and, for us, with more music, so for the moment just a few flower pictures to keep you all happy!

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19 April 2009

We spent the whole of Easter week playing chamber music in Anduze.  We met on Saturday in the Music School, all of which we had taken over during the school holidays.  There were 15 or so of us altogether, players of strings, piano, recorders and a few singers, and on the first evening we traded and bid and discussed and recruited to fill all 35 playing slots for the week with groups of all sizes and combinations.

Mary and I had gone equipped with our recorders and a good selection of music for different combinations - others had come with quantities of classical and romantic chamber music and some choral things, and in a surprisingly short time most of the slots had filled up, with some surprising rarities for strange combinations used to fill the time of various people left out at particular points.  We already knew 2 recorder players and many or most of the others attending (from all parts of the country, not just the Languedoc) and we found our fears of being left out quite unfounded - indeed by the end of the first day of playing we felt quite tired and had played 6 different composers or styles of music between us.  Trudy, who mostly sits quietly and listens or sleeps when music is being played, got quite excited at points and started trying to eat a music stand or drag my sweater across the floor!

Over the ensuing week Mary played lots of piano (including the Trout Quintet) and 'cello in string quartets and with other 'cellos.  We both played recorders with one or two others nearly every morning and also from time to time with a singer.  The variety was enormous and the effort of concentration large especially since we'd done so little in such a concentrated way for so many years.  Each day we shared lunch with most of the other course members, and sometimes therefore felt a bit sleepy for the early afternoon sessions.  But we performed a lot with people we knew before and with others we met in Anduze for the first time.  Late in the week Jon conducted everyone in a mixed string and recorder band playing Marais and Holborne, a classic Anglo-French mix.  We shall certainly be back next year.

To avoid travelling every day we'd booked a gîte and found ourselves comfortably and quietly housed in countryside high overlooking the edge of the town.  We were glad of the heating at first because the weather was awful - heavy rain almost non-stop for 2 days (as in Lunel, we gather),  So we were cosy inside with some nice food and wine and books and British satellite tv when we were not playing, and the only problem was to get Trudy to go outside as of course she must!

One of the programmes I saw on the telly the first weekend was about the Hillsborough tragedy 20 years ago when 96 Liverpool supporters were killed in a crush at a football ground in Sheffield.  As so often the stories from people involved reduced me to tears.  At that moment we were actually in Sheffield and driving back to Wirksworth - we heard the reports without really realising the scale of the tragedy.  Now people like tv commentators Alan Hansen (who was team captain at the time and Mark Lawrenson, Steve Gerrard (only 8 then and lost a cousin that day) and Sue Johnson all spoke through their own tears and emotions of the immediacy of the loss and the continuing sense of unfinished business, cover-ups and the solidarity of people in Liverpool, many of whom still won't buy the Sun because it falsely accused fans of being responsible.  All this is important to me as a Liverpool supporter and, by the way, I am so happy the  team has begun to play well again however unimportant the game seems when thinking of bereavements and loss of lives.  We cling to our British sporting loyalties here in France, where the soccer seems less dynamic even if the rugby is as good as in the UK!

1 April 2009

Unusually, this bit of the diary is a daily record, of our week in Paris.  At our 30th wedding anniversary party last October all our guests clubbed together to pay for the visit, and this is the story of our travels with thanks to them - to you - all.

During our week's visit we went to 4 concerts, visited 5 museums, 2 cathedrals, 3 parks and a cemetery, ate wonderful meals in a variety of restaurants, drank wine of varying quality but none of it bad, and walked in all but 3 of the 20 arrondissements as well as in Neuilly sur Seine, Boulogne Billancourt, the Bois de Boulogne and Saint Denis.

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21 March 2009

A whole month has slipped by, and spring is really here, with daytime temperatures in the 20s, lots of lovely sunshine but still rather chilly nights, especially when the northerly winds set in.  We've enjoyed some visitors here and also spent time visiting friends and sights elsewhere, as some of the photos this time show.  The panorama is taken near Narbonne, from a vineyard in La Clape from which you can see the Pyrenees.  I love the countryside there with sea nearby and mountains in the background.  There's more on this trip in the wine diary.

One of the great tourist attractions of the Languedoc is the Pont du Gard, the Roman aqueduct built to carry spring water from Uzès to Nîmes.  We went quite often before we moved here, and many of our friends are always taking their visitors there.  But This year we paid 2 visits within a month, our first for years, and were really impressed by the renovations around the site following disastrous floods in the Gardon valley in 2001 or 2.  The approaches and tourist facilities on both sides now are spacious and not intrusive.  All the same we were glad to be there out of season and in lovely bright weather.  I've included a couple of my photos here including a panorama of the view north-west to  Uzès, but the website is of course marvellous so you can see more there.

Back home we have been starting to tidy the garden, and Marcel (our French conversation host each week) arrived last week to prune the olive tree.  He has 70 of his own so knows what to do, which is essentially to level off the top like a crew-cut

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22 February 2009

A quiet month in Lunel.  We were delighted to welcome Jeff and Fi after we returned from England, and since then we have been fighting off colds and enjoying the cold bright early spring.  Not much to report - the usual walks into town with coffee in the sunshine, gentle meanders round the flea market, some garden tidying and DIY, and keeping up with sport and films on tv.  It's the mid-term holiday here until tomorrow (earlier and longer than in England) so Mary's 'cello playing has been on hold though she is helping as our choir accompanist - we are singing Haydn in the hope of a centenary concert later this year.  Anyway, in the absence of a lot to write I thought I would put in some winter photos of Lunel - not great pictures but just the streets and sights near us.  Slide show on the right and some panoramas above and below.

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2 February 2009

I write in a house surrounded by snow with the country more or less at a standstill after the heaviest snowfall in the southeast for 20 years, they say.  Our visit to England, staying near Rickmansworth with my cousin Alison and her husband David who were really welcoming, and meeting and visiting family and friends, has progressed peacefully and pleasantly.  Among other things we've been delighted to see Ed, and Sam, Sas and Heather, both of whom visited us at my cousin's house.  And yesterday Sam and I took a short time to visit Jordans Friends' meeting house to meet my cousin Mary and her family.  It was cold and sunny.  Aunt Ida died last October and Mary had arranged to scatter the ashes in the burial ground - Mary's husband Terence read a simple passage, and Mary placed the ashes in a small hole in front of my grandparents' grave.  Granny died in 1959, already nearly 80, and grandfather in 1980 at the age of 102, so the gravestone was already covered in lichen and the inscription barely legible - Ida was their youngest daughter and the last of her generation.  Sam and family have just set out to drive back to Derbyshire, hoping the roads will be clear enough to take them home over the middle of the day.

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26 January 2009

This is a bit of a travelogue of our trip through France to England.  I'm writing it on an almost empty ferry vibrating and rattling its way out of Calais in the afternoon sun.

We set out from Lunel on a rainy Friday morning, but by the time we arrived in the northern Rhône it was just cloudy and cold.  We'd decided to stop at the wine co-opérative of St Désirat to buy presents for our trip - and a few bottles for ourselves!  More on this in the wine diary.

Then on to Lyon, where we had used the excuse of a meeting at the weekend to take our first look round the city.  We arrived and parked by the Saône and spent the first afternoon looking round the old town, on the site of the first Roman settlement at the foot of the steep hillside enclosed by the loop of the river.  Our hosts later told us only half joking that one of the reasons the métro had not extended to their westerly suburb the other side of the hill was that every time someone started to tunnel there they came across more Roman remains and had to stop. I've divided the photos I took during our visit to Lyon into two groups, some shown here while others will be in a gallery of photos of the month for March.  The things that struck us most were deep narrow streets with tall buildings, secret courtyards with extraordinary staircases in external towers, some churches, and the rivers.  Lyon is at the junction of 2, the Saône which arrives from the north and west and the Rhône from the east.  We spent most of the time around the Saône where there is an impressive food market on Saturday mornings, but from the hills and as we rode the big wheel in the main square we had great views of both rivers.  We did not go up the steep hill by the old town to the 19th century basilique of Notre Dame de Fourvière but it is visible on the skyline in many of the photos.

As with many French churches, for me it was the stone carvings of people, scenes and symbols that were most exciting.  The frieze at the top of this section is of zodiac signs below the roof of the church of Saint Paul in the old town where there were also beautiful wooden carvings and furnishings inside, while in the old Jewish quarter there are fearsome gargoyles peering from the parapets.  But in the nearby cathedral of St Jean the attractions include a highly ornate mediaeval clock which chimes with all sorts of flapping and pirouetting figures several times during the day.  We walked a lot, and in this hilly city climbed a great many steps, but we also enjoyed a visit to the museums of silk and of decorative arts when the rain and cold drove us indoors.  There was a wonderful exhibition of elaborate dresses and other clothing made entirely of paper.

On the Sunday we set off northwards to Amiens.  We'd booked a hotel near the cathedral which proved to have comfortable enough beds but was otherwise a bit bizarre - hot showers only came after the radiators had been switched on; and the stairways and passages had notices apologising for their shabby state which was going to be improved almost immediately, only the notices and the decor had clearly been there for years and years!  But we had a nice breakfast and really enjoyed looking round the cathedral.  The outside is a mass of carving and a jumble of gargoyles and pinnacles, and the west façade is a marvel of decoration, with endless detail to explore: these friezes of zodiac signs are either side of one of the doors.  Inside the sheer height is impressive and there are some richly coloured stained glass windows and some elaborate decorated screens and tableaux, but the huge octagonal labyrinth in the nave was the most interesting feature for me, and unlike some is was left clear.  I decided to follow the trail of black tiles from the edge to the centre and was intrigued to find that the experience was calming, with a feeling of certainty, as I progressed along the intricate winding pathway.

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20 January 2009

The middle of January already and we are about to go to England.  We hope this will be a good chance to visit friends in the south and to see our family too.  Apologies if we come and go without getting in touch - it's already a juggling act to fit in all those we'd like to see.

As I write it is bright and not too cold.  The first fortnight of January has been fairly cold particularly at night - my resolution to record weather each day means I can say with confidence that the night temperature has been below or around freezing most nights.  And of course we had the snow, in almost unheard-of amounts for Lunel (see pics below).  But generally it's still been warmer than in England, and mid-afternoon temperatures are usually in the teens, with lots of the lovely bright sunshine we love here in winter.

January is the time for the Mayor to hold his annual meeting and set out plans for the town.  Last Friday's was our 3rd, but last year just before the municipal elections they could not really say anything, just celebrate achievements.  They did that this year too, but also promised improvements over the next few years - the rail station precinct, various parks and open spaces, better pavements etc.  We don't forget that this a council which cuts things too, but there seemed to be some useful projects there, enlivened by a film and some cartoons done by the same person who drew the new year card I copied in the end of 08 Diary (click the link at the top of the page if you'd like to see that).  Oh yes, and by the 'verre d'amitié' this year including tasting stalls from 3 of the local wine makers who are rightly seen as one of the special features of Lunel commerce.  We enjoyed some really nice sparkling muscat before heading home.

One thing the Council would have liked to claim credit for - they made a lot of it in their film) was the Mandolin Festival.  We know how hard the organisers and our fellow volunteers work to make it happen, and only with the Council would do more, but on Saturday we were with nearly 30 others at a volunteers' dinner celebrating the success of last year's Festival and looking forward to the next one in October.

We are both busy with music again now that the holiday break is over, and I am struggling to keep up with the amount of learning I need to do for 3 choirs and for the solo singing I want to do.  For years I have had a block about learning words by heart, but lots of choirs perform without music routinely, and my singing teacher tells me often how much better I would be if I did that solo as well.  I've also realised to my shame that those who do not read music and so have to learn things completely end up being far more alive in performance than those of us who hide behind our copies.  So I'm starting to face up to this big change and to work out how to go about it.

We often feel fortunate to be in relatively good health - both Mary and I have had various minor scares and tests in the past couple of months which have been reassuringly clear - and frequently realise there are those much worse off than we are.  Today our (F)friend Brian Painter is in hospital in Marseille for a major brain operation, his second in 5 or 6 years, and he and his wife Janet are very much in our minds as I write.

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