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Above - pictures in the town by Jeff Davenport and by Jon, Jan-July 2007 Life in Lunel This diary is written by Jon. You'll find last year's on a separate page (click the link below). We have added separate pages for notes on food and health, and for reflections on our life in France, so that you don't have to read everything unless you choose to! Follow the links below if you want to find more on these subjects. |
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The
French don't attach nearly as much importance to Christmas as we do - at
least, that is the theory. But
everywhere in Lunel there are lights (strung across streets - matching -
and on houses - gaudy) and speakers churning out festive music (very
canned), and people seem as wound up about it all as they are in
England. Today we have been round town shopping – not too busy but
then some shops are open even on Christmas morning for last-minute
things. We shall be taking
Sam & Co to eat at our favourite restaurant on 25 December – we
went there last year and the owners have since become friends. This
past week or so we have been getting in the mood ourselves not only with
my own choir's concerts but through other music.
At home we have a shelf of CDs of carols and so on which we play
when the mood takes us, but this week we were lucky enough to go to one
of the best choral concerts I have ever heard.
It was given by the English group the Oxford
Voices (don't
expect too much of the website just now - it is being revamped and that
seems to have overrun a lot!) in Uzès.
They sang 20 carols and other Christmas pieces in the magnificent
Cathedral there, which was packed.
Uzès is a town with a big Anglo-American population and the
audience was 50:50 French/Anglophone.
The choir was magnificent, 14 fine voices beautifully blended and
impeccable in both technical presentation and expression.
Some of the music was incredibly moving.
We stayed with American friends in Uzès afterwards and so had a
little time in the morning to remind ourselves how beautiful is the old
town centre, hopelessly 'smart' and full of art and craft shops, but
both grand and elegant with a huge cloistered market square, intriguing
narrow streets, alleys and courtyards all in well-restored golden
sandstone. We drove back
via Nîmes, a mistake for a rapid trip because of slow market-day
traffic in the city, but worth it for the magnificent countryside across
the Gardon (a new bridge in sympathetic style replacing the one swept
away in the 2001 floods) and up the steep winding rock-lined road to the
plain north of the city. The
following day we made our own music, playing recorders and crumhorns
with friends who are staying at the Maison Quaker in Congénies.
We plan to perform a few short pieces to members of the Quaker
Meeting on Sunday, and perhaps get them singing a few carols too! This
is also a festive time for meals and social gatherings - 50 at the RER
Christmas meal in Sommières last Friday and a shared meal at Meeting
next Sunday, as well as invitations to friends, and our own apéritif
with neighbours the same evening to celebrate
our first year in France. I
was also delighted when it was time to visit my pianist Nathalie again. She is an excellent accompanist, and that is rare.
I have always been conscious that the songs I sing are usually
easier for the singer than for the pianist, but this time the boot was
at least equally on each foot because we were trying new songs for me,
by Duparc, with poems by the (drug-aided) Baudelaire – interesting and
quite different from our normal staple diet of Schubert. We are meeting regularly now to play and sing together for
our own pleasure – possible recitals or concerts will wait until we
are sure what we want to do and until Nathalie in particular is less
busy – she and her husband are just planning their new house the other
side of Montpellier. It
just remains to wish
all of you who read this a very happy Christmas and New Year.
We have not been able to contact everyone individually but think
of our many friends often and hope you all enjoy the warmth, love and
joy that we have with family and friends around us. 14 December It's bright and cold in Lunel, and signs of Christmas are all around. Mary arrived home with the tree this morning, the lights are up around town, and the Christmas Market is on Sunday.
Above all, for me, the music at Christmas is very important and moving and it was lovely to be immersed in it again. A lot of the carols I have sung for over 40 years, and one, Ding Dong Merrily on High, I first sang with the school choir when I was 16 (including London performances on the steps of St Paul's and in Trafalgar Square). In fact music has been even more prominent than usual in our lives since we have just joined another association, this one focusing on early music and based near Pézénas - it's run by a professional recorder player who arranges days focusing on a small amount of music which we play together in depth, quite different from most of the days we went to in England where you play a lot of music but not really analysing and improving ensemble and so on. We went to our first meeting a fortnight ago and it promises very well. And yesterday evening we went with our neighbour Hélène to a great jazz gig in a bar (underground, with vaults) in a nearby village called Junas. There are monthly jazz evenings like this in the winter, and a summer festival in the quarry there. Yesterday we heard an excellent group called Coton Candies doing 30s and 40s numbers like Sweet Sue, My Blue Heaven, Sing Sing Sing and Memories are Made of This - Mary knew them all and I enjoyed them all. We were with Hélène's parents and their friends, and met some other people we knew from RER.
Finally, this winter has started much colder than last, but with such bright and clear sunshine that it has often been a joy to be outside around Lunel. I have just cut up an old fence to make the front yard tidier - lots of extra firewood too. And we have December roses - a few photos to finish with, including some horses at Solutré, Polish in origin but apparently of a genetically very ancient type!
On Saturday we had the Transhumance in Lunel. Odd really - this is usually a festival marking the ascent of sheep from their winter quarters to their summer pastures in the hills or mountains. It has been celebrated in Die for many years each June, and although these days sheep are taken at least part of the way by lorry rather than walked up, it makes sense there because keeping sheep is a local occupation. In Lunel nobody keeps sheep (nor for miles around as far as we have seen) and by November the sheep are back in their winter quarters. But the spectacle of a thousand-odd sheep passing through the town with horses and donkeys, a band and shepherds as well as a number of talented sheepdogs (most border collies I noticed) was very enjoyable. I spent an hour on my bike following the procession around town and here are some photos. As I write Mary is with half a dozen French people who come each week for English conversation. It's part of an increasingly busy weekly cycle which starts with my singing lesson on Monday mornings. I've only just got over a long-drawn-out cold but my teacher is merciless and truthfully I feel better for being pushed to sing and free up the breathing! He is very exacting but also encouraging and I'm really enjoying starting to learn things I never thought to sing - now a Verdi aria, for example. Mary is also enjoying her Monday evening Arabic class (just before the English conversation) although it is slow progress learning a new script and way of thought as well as the vocabulary and so on. She takes opportunities to learn new words from the shopkeepers from whom we buy excellent halal meat in town! Tomorrow we shall as usual be with our French language class, which has become increasingly popular. Now we meet in people's houses since the old classrooms we used to use were too resonant for good language learning and listening, and usually we bring and share a lunch after the hard work is done at midday. On Wednesday evening we shall be with some of the same people (and many more) for another bring and share meal preceded by the monthly planning meeting for the RER (no need to follow this link unless you have not read this often and want to find out more). It's often a rather confusing occasion for us English since people frequently speak all at once and we lose track. But it's very friendly - last Friday we were at a special extra gathering arranged through the group, where we ate hot chestnuts, drank good wine and listened to singing and stories provided by several of the members - again, following the stories was more or less beyond me, but it was a warm and enjoyable evening. In between I try to keep up various websites. At the moment I am trying to improve one of them, for the Quaker meeting we go to, but the technicalities of web editing are frustratingly eluding me and I think I am in for a long learning process - meanwhile the site will remain less pretty than I would like, but at least the information is there. Around the house and garden the major event has been cutting down the cherry tree which proved to be very diseased - a fungus which caused it to ooze resin. We caught and cured it in the apricot, but the cherry was less useful and farther gone, so it is now firewood. This is going to be useful - we have started to dig into our vast heap of bought firewood, which some of you will recall we had delivered in the spring - we light a fire most evenings which is cheerful although the central heating would be adequate without - in fact, the fire simply overrides the central heating thermostat, so we don't waste fuel. It's certainly getting more wintry now - still often bright and not too cold in the middle of the day, but the days are shorter and the nights often cold when the wind is from the north. Southerly, easterly and westerly winds bring more cloud and milder times. Only a month until Christmas - time flies! 2-6 November The sun has returned after a very short intermission. Friday was our friend Judi's 60th birthday, and we wish her all possible happiness as she joins our 60s club - her godson Alex made a great Youtube video for her which you can see here - some familiar faces along the way, and it just shows what YouTube can do! Meanwhile this is also the anniversary of our living in the Languedoc - although we didn't move to Lunel until December, we were in the Hérault last 1 November in - as I see - similarly beautiful bright and sunny weather. We have driven around a lot in the past few days, north to Uzès and the Cevennes, and the autumn colours are (again) magnificent this year. Last week we went to the final of the Trophée Pescalune, a course camarguaise event in which young men chase and are chased by bulls. The result is a champion bull (out of 7 that competed) and a champion raseteur who tries to remove small tokens from the bull's head and horns (the bulls were mostly too experienced to allow total success. The champion bull is the one which keeps most of his tokens and who chases most successfully - the young men have to leap the barrier to avoid the bull. Sometimes the bull leaps the barrier too and rushes round the kind of corridor at the edge of the arena, where spectators have to leap into the ring in turn to avoid him. Photo gallery here - it is actually very difficult to get really good photos so next year I may improve on these! This year it was the 4th Mandoline Festival in Lunel. We went to all 4 evenings of concerts, and some of the informal gigs in bars around town, and they exceeded our wildest expectations. We would have gone anyway - our friend Carolyn's cousin-in-law Olivier works tirelessly to put the whole thing on, but the quality and variety of music on offer is extraordinary. On Thursday we heard the Young American Mandoline Ensemble (YAME) - 7 young musicians from the USA who came together for this Festival, playing and singing a fusion of bluegrass, jazz, crossover Irish/Appalachian and much more - they are all aged 15-18 and some of them have flourishing careers already although they still go to school - the violinist Alex Hargreaves and singer Sarah Jarosz in particular were astonishing; and there was also a brilliant Mandolin Orchestra from Venezuela (this website is in Spanish, but you can hear some music) - very polished and full of life. The day before we heard classical pieces including some Vivaldi played by various people including Caterina Lichtenberg who was outstanding. On Friday was Tim O'Brien with Irish/American crossover music, and on Saturday the astonishing virtuoso Brazilian musician Amandinho, before the grand finale where everyone reappeared! I won't recite the programme, which you can find via the link above, but here are a few photos. There were gigs in cafés as well as the concerts in the splendidly refurbished Salle Georges Brassens just up the road. Signs of Christmas - baby equipment on loan from our neighbours in the hall, and Mary has started decorating another spare room in preparation for what we hope will be an (albeit brief) influx of family. Autumn has come, and I sit writing on a grey wet morning, although the sun promises to return at the weekend. We have just returned from the Diois and a great Twinning celebration with over 400 visitors from Wirksworth, Germany, Hungary and from Varallo in Italy (the 50th anniversary of the link with Die was the occasion of this event). We met many friends from France and of course from Wirksworth and enjoyed magnificent meals, music from the Italian wind band and from the Wam Bam Band, and splendid dancing by a Hungarian folk dance troupe - pictures attached. We were welcomed by wonderful friends in Saint Roman and Châtillon-en-Diois and had the opportunity to taste good wines - see wine diary. Above all we were bowled over by the autumn scenery and colours enhanced by the frosty nights which arrived with us as autumn came to the mountains too.
Our musical life has followed some interesting twists and turns this month - I have started my singing lessons with a very good teacher who is making me work and think hard both about technique and interpretation - it's about 30 years since I had serious lessons and there is a great deal to learn and to un-learn! I'm about to resume regular work with my pianist Nathalie, and that may involve starting to learn new songs from the French repertoire, although she plays Schubert beautifully and that's where we began - lots of scope there, especially now I have discovered whole swathes of sheet music to print out from CD-ROM, all Schubert's songs on one CD and a huge amount of French solo song on 2 more - amazing! Mary meanwhile continues her search for rewarding orchestral and chamber music opportunities with her 'cello - the Association des Musiciens Amateurs has led to some good contacts, but a trip to Pézenas yesterday left her wondering whether the group was worth the travel, and otherwise she struggles to find groups small or large which are not either too professional or (far) too basic and slow. French musicians generally don't sight-read as well as we are brought up to do in England. We continue to meet and make new friends and acquaintances - some through music, which help tilt the scales (no pun intended?!) towards sticking with groups for Mary, since some of the people are really nice despite the variable quality of the music, and others through our membership of other groups. This week a German couple who spend half the year in their little house here dropped by after meeting us at a drama evening next door, and asked us to lunch today - really friendly and interesting people - and we continue to be asked out by other friends both in Lunel and around Sommières (the latter the result of contacts through our French class in the RERS association about which I have written before). All of which makes the retired life anything but retiring, although sometimes tiring, but always pleasurable. And our house and garden advances little by little - the living room gradually getting redecorated and the garden transformed by a huge load of pebbles spread over paths and beds front and back. The addition of a new painting from our friend Ali Benyahya has added light and warm autumn colours to the stairs. There's lots more to do. And Mary is about to start work with children helping them to learn to read and communicate through an out-of-school association to which she was introduced by our neighbour Michel. Last but not least, the rugby. On 13 October England beat France in the semi-final of the World Cup. Of course, none of us really thought either side would get through. Mary and I had watched virtually all the matches on Sky and celebrated the successes of minnows against the mighty, until against all the odds Australia and New Zealand crashed out against our two surviving 6-nations teams on 6/7 Oct! Champagne all round, and the following Saturday we invited our neighbours to join us to watch the match and for more bubbly no matter what the outcome.
2 October Less
than 36 hours ago there was a colossal rainstorm overnight when (a
friend with a rain-gauge told us) 165 mm of rain fell in a few hours.
Luckily most of the waterproofing around our house seems to have worked
but on Sunday morning we had to go a long way round on our way to Quaker
meeting since the direct roads were flooded. The first rain in
months, but when it rains, it really rains! Otherwise
although the nights are much cooler it is still mostly warm and sunny in
the daytime. Now that the rentrée
is here all sorts of activities have started.
A fortnight ago there was a big fête des associations in
the town with 99 local clubs and societies showing their wares at stalls
in the park – we tracked down the local Amnesty group and Mary is
signing up with another association providing out-of-school support to
primary-aged children, reading, painting and suchlike (our neighbour
Michel is involved and helped her get in touch).
Then adult ed classes have begun, and we have both found exciting
things to do. I have a new
singing teacher (after nearly 30 years without) who is a very impressive
man with lots to teach and remind me about technique and interpretation;
and Mary is studying classical Arabic with a small and very interesting
sounding group. Our interest in getting to know people from
different cultures here may be aided in time by the contacts with the
north African world she makes there - the racism here is deeply
ingrained and intertwined with republican politics and integrationist
values quite different from those we knew and loved to hate in England. Mary is starting an
English conversation class arising from the Réseau d'Echanges
Réciproques des Savoirs which I've written about in this diary
before, a very large mixed group of people who get together to seek and
to offer knowledge and skills through voluntary exchange.
With other individual lessons she gives she is now doing quite a
lot of voluntary English teaching - probably enough, but what she does
is fun and interesting. In the past few
weeks we have also both had our birthdays, and since our new terrace was
finished at the beginning of the month we took the opportunity of the
visit of some other French friends to invite all the neighbours for an
apéritif. They clubbed
together to buy us a lovely north African lamp on a stand which stands
proudly in the corner of the terrace and goes with the mosaic table and
fountain we’d already bought; and the couple next door also presented
us with world cup rugby tickets. Mary
went with them to see Samoa and Tonga and since then we have been glued
to exciting matches and the resurgence of so-called minnows in the pool
stages of the world cup. The USA did brilliantly against a
dominant South Africa last night, and although we mourn the exit of
Ireland and Wales they have been overcome by impressive play from Fiji
and Argentina. Scotland and England will have to play much better
than they have to get beyond the quarter finals. We are enjoying interesting music now too. A fortnight ago we drove some distance west to go to a late evening concert by the Hilliard Ensemble in Clermont l'Hérault. They sang a wonderful mixture of Josquin and Dufay in a beautiful old abbey church in the middle of the town. And I am looking forward to new singing challenges with my new teacher and starting to meet my accompanist again after the summer break and her marriage. Mary has started going to her chamber group the other side of Montpellier too and next weekend we have our next AMA meeting in Anduze as usual, where we are performing Holborne dances (recorder and piano) and Schubert songs together.
This must be the nicest month of the year. Perhaps I'll always feel like that about the month we're in - flowers in springtime, long summer evenings, mild luminous winter days. But somehow the temperatures and shady evenings on our new terrace this month have been special. In telling about events in our lives in this diary I neglect the everyday. How do our weeks go by? Well, Sunday (as today) is a market day in Lunel, and sometimes we will stroll into town and, after a walk through the big clothes and household goods market by the Arènes, buy fruit and vegetables at local producers' stalls outside the Halles, meat, cheese or fish inside, and have some coffee or a beer in the Bar des Sports on the corner, before returning via the plant and flower market for herbs, flowers for the house or plants for the garden. But these days we often find ourselves instead on Sundays at the Quaker meeting in Congénies, and then sharing lunch with friends. Then our opportunity for market shopping is mainly Thursdays in Lunel, or at the splendid food market in Calvisson, the next village to Congénies, before meeting on Sundays. Saturday is the marché de puces or flea market in Lunel and often also a chance to walk into town, meet friends who are stall holders there and have a coffee. Other fixed points in our week are our French conversation in Sommières on Tuesday mornings - this is part of the Réseau d'Echanges Réciproques des Savoirs (RERS) which is a voluntary association we belong to, allowing members to offer and receive information and expertise from one another. In this case we receive knowledge in abundance from our teacher Marcel, a retired surgeon, who in return learns the occasional idiomatic English expression - he is passionate about the English language. Tuesdays can be busy for Mary because she also plays in a music group in Celleneuve, the other side of Montpellier, in the evening. Most of the other regular engagements are also Mary's - Monday afternoons at the sewing and (in her case) knitting group at the Accueil de Ville, Monday evenings from next week an English conversation class she is offering through RERS here at home, Wednesday afternoons various individual English lessons, to the girl next door and her friend, and to the young woman who serves in our favourite restaurant - training as a waiter/ress is take very seriously here and she has to present and discuss a menu in English for her exams next year. But from time to time we have joint activities, particularly with music with the Association des Musiciens Amateur which meets regularly in Anduze about an hour's drive north of here in the Cevennes as well as for odd playing weekends in other places in the hills where most of the members seem to live. Separately, Jon goes to sing with his accompanist in Lattes about half an hour west (just south of Montpellier) and Mary attends occasional Partie Socialiste meetings, and of course we have our visitors. We counted the other day and worked out we have welcomed over 40 people, some French but mainly from other countries, for overnight stays since February, and of course many more for meals or apéritifs. It's been a delight to have so many friends old and new, and we look forward to more family visits as time goes on. Fairly regularly we will find an opportunity to welcome all the neighbours as we did last week to celebrate our birthdays and the completion of the terrace. Sometimes we make these occasions wine tastings and share bottles from our cellar. This sounds hectic, but we have blessedly quiet moments and times when we catch up with DIY and household chores - decoration will still remain to be done for many months and projects like the pergola for the terrace (which I made with bamboo we cut in the garden earlier this year) also take time. When we are not involved in all this, we often sit down to read, or to watch tv - we especially enjoy sport, and have revelled in the thrilling one-day cricket series between England and India recently. Now it's the rugby world cup, and apart from despair and puzzlement at the inability of any of the major northern hemisphere teams to win even against supposedly weak opposition, we have been excited by lots of the play by the best teams and cheered the triumphs of the reputed minnows (not an apposite word for some of the huge and muscular players in many of the teams). As I write Mary has been in Montpellier with our neighbours watching Tonga beat Samoa in a close match. We also frequently go to bed late at weekends as we catch up with soccer on Match of the Day (1 & 2) (an hour later here of course). 2 September Our new terrace is finished. We have heard and read horror stories of builders here and in England who do not turn up, delay and leave things in a mess, but all we can say is that M Montessano and his P'tit Chantier gang did us proud, always on time and doing a very high quality job. Add a mosaic table and fountain from our local shop A La Découverte du Maghreb and we have our evening eating and sitting space for most of the year. Once we complete the bamboo pergola and sunshade it will be marvellous at midday too.
Otherwise the last fortnight has been quiet enough, and now we are already in September and nearly a year since my retirement. Time has really flown. 20 August - summer festivities and domestic blips A web nightmare for a moment 10 days ago - our domain name went off-line. Apparently .eu domains have to be renewed every year and although we had paid for two our service providers did not activate the automatic renewal so - bang - no site, no email and momentary panic. But - fair do's - they sorted it quickly and here we are again. But that's it for domestic crises - for the rest, the last month has gone well, hot sun, blue skies, lots of music and lovely visitors. In this quiet interlude (men arrive to start enlarging the terrace tomorrow at 7.30 am!) I'm catching up on the diary. The big event in Lunel has been the Jazz Festival, 5 free outdoor concerts of which the last (on 15 August) came complete with fireworks. They were some of the most spectacular I'd ever seen, and we were showered with ash because the wind was blowing towards us from the display! Brilliant, though. We did not stay for the music that night, and indeed didn't need to because it came over loud and clear to us at home several blocks away. But we did go to most of the other concerts including the brilliant Florence Fourcade (pupil of Grapelli) and her quartet Melle Swing,
and the following night the dynamic Boney Fields and the Bone's Project with an evening of Chicago Blues
We also went to a student string quartet playing Haydn, Mozart and more in the upstairs courtyard of a splendid château in the next village east of here, Marsillargues, and having taken our friend Ursula on to her renaissance singing week further west, we returned to the charming countryside around Pézenas to go to their final concert in the village of Roujan. By an extraordinary coincidence the centre there is owned and run by my old singer colleague Francis Steele (who was co-directing the course) and his partner Anne (you can see more about their centre, La Maison Verte, by clicking the link). The 17 singers had prepared a 40-minute programme of mostly one-to-a part music from astonishingly varied European styles and origins across the Renaissance. with excellent results. 24 July - bicycles and bulls, Italy and invités.
What a busy month! All of you who look for frequent updates will have been disappointed, while we rushed around being tourists on our own and with visitors. Now we are in a quieter moment, relaxed meals with neighbours and catching up with domestic stuff. Mary has just had one of those fascinating brushes with bureaucracy - she needed a copy of her birth certificate to send to a pension provider, so went to the lawyers who helped us buy our house. They told her no, it wasn't them but the Mairie. The Mairie said it was them, but not the main bit, the separate police HQ. They finally said yes it was them but the bloke who does it is only there in the mornings. So back she goes tomorrow! Everyone was most helpful though. She had walked quite a way by the time she returned. To start from near the end, on Saturday we gave ourselves a wonderful early birthday present, a performance of the Marriage of Figaro in the Théâtre de l'Archevêché, the old archbishops' palace in the old city centre. The huge stage (a bit too big for Mozart's more intimate moments and doubles entendres) is in the central courtyard with double-tiered seating - we were on the top deck under the stars on an evening which only got a bit cool after midnight as the opera ended. The playing and singing were really wonderful, and we revelled in the delicious twists and turns of our favourite opera. No photos allowed in the auditorium so here are a couple of Aix, and one of a vintage car rally we stumbled on as we wandered round in the afternoon!
Friday evening we went to a wine event, in the local village of Saint Christol. More on the wine side in the wine diary, but a charming coda to a good warm evening in the arenes, the prelude to a week of bull-related festivities for the fête votive in the village, was an encounter with a young woman who greeted us warmly and, once we recognised her out of her white coat, proved to be not only one of the staff in our local pharmacy but related to one of the local wine-making families! It's all part of feeling more part of the community here. The Tour de France passed the end of our road on Thursday afternoon and we were there with our chairs and cool box to cheer them on. Pictures of the long procession of commercial floats and the final lightning passage of the two groups of cyclists here. Watching the tv since, we were very well-behaved - on later days the spectators often dash into the road and pat the riders on the back or run alongside for a while, endangering everyone (someone fell off and others crashed as a result yesterday). Ours was an easy stage, almost all on the flat, but when you see them climbing mountains you know what an extraordinary effort it all is. Almost a fortnight earlier it was the opening of the Fête de Lunel and the Abrivado, another hour-long carnival procession with the climax a lightning stampede through the streets by 100 black Camargue bulls. In this case the procession was full of local colour, with many teams of gardiens (horse riders who skilfully herd the bulls on the many local manades or bull-farms, riding white Camargue horses) and wondrous carriages pulled by horses and by donkeys. Some of our neighbours got into trees to see the sights. Later Mary went with one of our guests to see the first evening's sport in the Arènes - sparsely attended because both bulls and men were young novices, but a good way to learn about the courses camarguaises where the men have to remove small trophies from the bull's horns while the bull evades and chases them. See photos here. Before that, we were invited to our neighbour Michel's 70th birthday party - at a manade a few km from here. It was a surprise (totally kept unlike some I have known (!)) with over 100 of us crouching in the bull-ring awaiting his arrival, then standing up to sing to him before a great evening of horsemanship, food and drink. Michel is an ex-PE teacher who has generations of ex-students and friends in the Lunel area spanning more than 40 years, and they and his family provided a wonderful and fitting tribute to him. The week before he had been working away digging out and renewing his concrete driveway with a group of helpers, and we were happy to accept and barrow over the old hardcore to start the terrace extension we are having built in August. We have had 11 visitors, all good friends and their friends, in the past month, and in the process have enjoyed trips to Avignon and Aigues Mortes (again), Bédarieux and Le Poujol sur Orb (where we saw a great exhibition of paintings by Faith O'Reilly), Bouzigues (home of oysters) and our old haunt of La Tamarissière to visit Françoise, as well as enjoying the local festival and the company of friends at home. We also had a picnic in a vineyard which appear in the wine diary (apologies for delay in updating - no time until now) - the Chemin des Rèves in the village of Combaillaux north-west of Montpellier. In between all this we had our first trip to Italy. Although our main purpose was to visit the new house of our friends John and Mary (yes, another pair with the same names, though slight difference in spelling...), we had decided to be tourists on the way. We drove to north-east Italy, near the Slovenian border, via Verona, Vicenza (impossibly grand seat of Palladian architecture - we did not have time to visit the less overwhelming villas in the countryside around) and Treviso (which the Italians see as undiscovered, charming and romantic - we did not rate it highly).
Verona (above) was a marvel and we would gladly go again, as well as spending more time on the wine (including Valpolicella and Amarone - see wine diary) and on Lake Garda nearby to the east. But one of the highlights was a visit to the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli, a world-famous and wonderful, unique centre for the teaching and practice of mosaic art. If you click no other link, go to this one above - if you would like to see my more humble photos click here as well! John and Mary's house is in Friuli, which area is an undiscovered gem in Italy. They have converted a ruin into a lovely place to live, and we were privileged to share their party with local and more distant friends of several nationalities. But in addition we discovered that the area is a wonderful wine region in its own right and we enjoyed one of the best wine tastings of my life in a nearby village, Nimis, where Ivan Monai of the Anna Berra winery welcomed us with impressive elegance and care, matched by the quality of all the wines we tasted. More on this in the wine diary. We
have just returned from a week or so of family visits in the UK, and
arrived home early this morning after a long drive from Dieppe.
The Autoroute through the centre of France is dramatic not just
for the Millau viaduct but for the high summits and awesome engineering
of all of its southern section, but much of the landscape there is bleak
and treeless. On the way up
it was cloudy but on the way back the sun shone and set on the southern
half of the journey and the colours were glorious – we passed over the
viaduct in the twilight when the lights on the columns gave it an
ethereal appearance of floating in water. By contrast our circuit of England through the Midlands and south seemed
lush and almost overgrown with trees, hedges and verges in full summer
leaf. Our ferry over from
Dieppe was almost empty, but the return yesterday was crowded with many
families with children young enough to be taken out of school! Some of our friends find the 4-hour crossing and long loading
times frustrating, but we are settling into a retired pattern with less
pressure on time so took things as they came, and we were off the boat
quickly enough in the end. Now
the longer days are here we could still drive most of the way back in
daylight. We found our two grand-daughters (nearly 2, and 3 months) in fine form,
and enjoyed the company of family and friends, good food and drink, a
great trip to the zoo, to
say nothing of a splendid wedding, the daughter of Jon's cousin, in
Leicester.
This was not our only trip to England recently - since our trip to the
mountains in May both of us had made short visits, Jon for a meeting and
to see another cousin, and Mary sadly for the funeral of her first
husband Llew. He had been
ill with cancer and died quite quickly after a relapse.
Obviously this was a great sadness for Ed and Jeff, who arranged
the small farewell ceremony with dignity.
Despite his longstanding ill-health Llew was remembered with love
and affection by family and friends, for his courtesy and immense fund
of ornithological knowledge above all. These short trips had allowed us both to try different forms of travel -
by air from Montpellier to Gatwick (BA at short notice and reasonable
cost) and train in both directions (Eurostar/TGV via both Lille and
Paris). The train journeys
were smooth enough but far too expensive by comparison to the air trips
to encourage more frequent use. The
relative costs will need to change in the future if ecological arguments
are to have more impact. In between all these events we have enjoyed some quieter times at home
with house guests from Wirksworth and an outstanding concert by the viol
player Jordi Savall and his group Hesperion XXI.
Our neighbour Bruno very kindly took us, and we enjoyed the
magical setting of the 12th century cathedral of Maguelone, an isolated
coastal site not far from us in Lunel.
Mary had been before (another concert by JS) but it was new to me
and the rain miraculously cleared to allow us to enjoy the marshy
surroundings and the calls of birds at dusk as well as the architecture
and fine Renaissance music. Now we have another period at home with several visitors before our trip
to Italy in a month or so. It
has been dull since we returned but very warm and humid, and the sun
breaks through in brief spells – we ate outside yesterday evening. The apricots are finally ripening on the tree although other
varieties from nearby have long been on sale in the markets, and the
persimmons are appearing in abundance on their graceful branches.
We have been looking up recipes for the fruit (chutney, jam,
cakes and cookies) and have found a great
website – the fruit is more accurately known as Fuyu (sweeter and
firmer than other kinds of persimmon), comes from the far east and is
widely grown in California. They are finally ripe in the autumn. Look out for additions to wine and other pages in the what's new section
soon! Saint Bérenger, the day before Pentecôte. If I keep on naming saints' days I might as well find out what they did, and he was a monk well-known for his ascetiscim who lived at the Abbey of St Papoul in the Laurargais (near our friend Barry near Castelnaudary - see pottery photos) in the 11th century. it says on the website "crowds came to the abbey to worship on his grave after miracles had taken place there..." Another (more than usually) eventful fortnight. Mary and I have just comme back from separate trips to England, mine to a meeting where I also took the opportunity to visit the splendid exhibition Sacred, a topically relevant comparison on Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths drawing out similarities and differences, which was assembled and managed by Jo, daughter of our friends Ruth and Claus. Well done her - I spent 2 hours in a small and intricately arranged space, where the logical path of the exhibits reflected the contrast between left>right reading of Christian texts and the right>left reading of both Jewish and Muslim ones. Meanwhile Mary's visit, at short notice, was for the more sombre and sad reason that her first husband, Llew Davenport, father of Ed and Jeff, died last week. He was only 65, ravaged in the end by a cancer which returned after remission to add to a lifetime of illness. Mary attended the cremation in Charing on Thursday with E&J, their partners Charmaine and Fi, and granddaughter Isla, Llew's brothers Maurice and David and Maurice's friend Steve who led the service; and his friends Jeff Columbé and Michael Lane and two social workers. Llew was much loved and will be much missed. Now we are back home together we have time to reflect on our extraordinary trip to the mountains near Châtillon en Diois the week before last (mentioned in the previous entry) - the photo gallery will say more than I can here about the beauty of the scenery and the camaraderie of 20+ people in a simple, remote refuge together. Despite the difficulties of walking (not least for Trudy who we think is the Highest Norfolk Terrier in History - see below - having attained 1800 metres), we greatly enjoyed ourselves! Back home I had a busy time picking over 12 kilos of cherries from our tree - some mutants are also pictured below!
12 May 2007 Today is the saint's day for Saint Achille. Not a well-known saint to me at least, but here every day is a saint's day, all the printed calendars (the one for the rubbish collections from the local councils, and the estate agent's freebie) have the saints alongside dates, so it's clearly part of the culture. At the end of April we went on a trip north with our neighbours to a picnic in the mountains. We were visiting an ecological construction exhibition - lots about dry loos, solar panels and construction in wood. The teenage girls with us were less than impressed by the loos and refused to go until they returned to more civilised places! But there were lots of interesting ideas including a shower that uses a fraction of the usual amount of water - by swirling like a Dyson vacuum cleaner apparently. All this in stupendous Cevennes scenery reached by a hair-raising drive on narrow roads, and we picnicked in a little cemetery by an old church.
For the past week it has been really hot. Everything in the garden is days or weeks ahead still - our jasmine arch is nearly in full flower and glorious scent and the cherries are starting to pinken. We felt really sorry for our friends Lesley and Caroline who arrived for their brief holiday last week just as it started to rain and left just when the sun re-emerged - in the intervening 4 days we had over 100 mm of rain! All the same we managed to doge the showers to visit a local horse show in a village north of here on May Day and to go to Montpellier as well as looking round some markets. The best market we have found for food is in Calvisson, near our Quaker meeting in Congénies. For a small village the range of stalls and produce on Sunday morning is remarkable - and you can go before meeting too! Now the hot weather has returned the wine cellar air conditioning is struggling to keep the place cool and we even retreat inside for more shade and freshness in the middle of the day with our new max-min thermometer showing over 30º today.
The second round of the elections last Sunday had Sarkozy a clear winner (53:47), but locally the results were very varied - Montpellier (the size of Nottingham) and lots of the south-west came out for Royal, but locally the right-wing vote for Sarkozy was higher than the national average - 57:43 in Lunel. Some of our neighbours support the left and have been anxious about Sarkozy's extremism, but some support him and think we need stronger government. We try to stay friends with our friends, and in a way find the more open declaration of allegiance a bit more tricky than English reserve. Our life continues busy - music particularly, and I have just returned from my first session with my new pianist, who is as good as I remembered and very enthusiastic about working with a singer, so that seems likely to be a long-term commitment if we can both find times to get together. Mary has also been working with me on some recorder sonatas we plan to perform tomorrow at the amateur music association in Anduze. Next week we shall be in the mountains near Die for a few days with friends in an isolated refuge - we hope the weather continues to be fine: the countryside of the southern Vercors (national park between Die and Grenoble) is magnificent. It will be another opportunity to speak and listen to French, in which I am becoming ever more confident thanks to friendly visits to neighbours. In the Quaker meetings too we try to keep to French - we should since it is a French meeting with several French-speaking members - but it is more of a struggle since people's level of speaking and comprehension varies quite a lot, so there is a lot of translating both ways and discussions take longer. Today we had a business meeting to discuss the increased organisation necessary to cope with the growth of the Sunday meeting for worship. This is a problem, because we need to make sure regular jobs are covered dependably without burdening a few people too much, but it's a nice problem to have because it signals a much more active group and more regular meetings. The shared meals are also terrific! Yesterday was election day, and we were amazed to find that the results were pretty well cut and dried (except from the overseas territories) by 8 pm, only 2 hours after the polls close. This of course is the presidential contest, and as with all French elections you can see how people voted in each commune, so we can pick out results for Lunel (or any other town or village). We were anxious: in the S of F the right wing has had a larger than average following: last time Le Pen (head of the Front National) had 28% of the vote here, almost double anyone else in the first round, and over 30% to Chirac's 70 in the second. This time Le Pen is down to 15+% here, only a bit higher than the national proportion, and the two candidates for the run-off in a fortnight are Nicholas Sarkozy with 30+% and Ségolène Royal with 25+% - a fairly straight right-left contest although the political lines are drawn more on the familiar issues of work, immigration and public safety. Locally the 2 main candidates had as big a share of the vote as elsewhere, but the centre candidate Bayrou was squeezed even more by more polarisation to the extremes (he got over 18% nationally although only 13% in this area). We watched quite a lot of tv coverage (thankfully mid-evening, not bleary 4 am stuff - why can they count votes so much more quickly here?) and look forward to the rest of the process. The turnout is far higher than we have become used to in national (let alone local) elections. The 2-round setup was introduced by de Gaulle to prevent fragmentation and minority party domination and ensure a stronger presidency. How Bayrou's supporters decide to vote will clearly have a lot of influence on how the final vote turns out, so commentators say both candidates will try to appeal to the centre ground. Sarkozy on the face of it stands a better chance because people see the right as more dominant now, and unemployment and immigration are big concerns. There is also the unknown effect of the first ever woman candidate, and not everyone likes Royal, but she has a strong social justice platform which appeals to us - Mary has been to Socialist party meetings and leafleted for them. But of course, we cannot vote (and won't be able to unless we decide to be French citizens, which we may do later; we can vote in more local elections once we have become local taxpayers). At least among our friends and neighbours we find we can discuss things openly, and people we meet seem ready to talk about their politics. For us the theme of the past fortnight has been discovery and friendship. We were invited to dinner with one couple, from Chicago, who come to Meeting and live a lot of the time in Uzès (a nice town we've known for years, north of Nîmes) - a lovely evening out last Monday and some new friends too I think. Out of other contacts with Quakers or Friends (the formal name for the religious organisation is the Society of Friends) I discovered the French class in Sommières conducted with enormous enthusiasm and verve by Marcel - a whole new circle overlapping with the group of Friends we are getting to know. I went to my first French class on Tuesday (Mary rightly feels that she has done enough class learning, but also that I should have something 'for me' which is thoughtful) and from there in turn we were invited to a wine tasting evening at Marcel's beautiful mas in the hills outside a village north of Sommières; and from there in turn we have had an invitation to a monthly bring and share evening - a sort of friendship circle - run by people around Sommières, which seems to take us back into the Friends' orbit too. Yesterday we had lunch with several Friends after Meeting, in a lovely sunlit yard across the road (a B&B actually - see their website - for anyone fancying Congénies, a charming village and located opposite the Friends' Meeting House !) Lots of new people to meet, lots of French language to hear and understand (though we sometimes find ourselves in English-speaking company), and a rather busy time in the end. It's more busy for Mary now that her arms are getting better - not only has she begun gardening a bit (see below) but is reviving her two Montpellier music groups. She is out at one now but not staying for the post-playing election results party in front of the telly; and she will start her Tuesday evening group again this week too; on Sunday next we go to our next amateur musicians' meeting together and plan to play and sing various things including some recorder music I think - I got the treble recorders out of their cases for the first time today. And I hope to become busier with music too - a great pianist I heard at a concert has phoned and would like to accompany me so I am taking volumes of Schubert to her house in May to try out and see if we want to work together more. It is very exciting; although Mary is as good an accompanist as I need, she is more into playing 'cello these days and so another good pianist will be very helpful.
The fine weather has taken us into the garden a lot. It really had been neglected and we shall spend a year I think getting it into good order. Last week I took three car-loads of Agave to the tip (nasty giant fleshy spiky stuff which grows on air it seems) so we now have a bed for lavender under the window, and Mary is painstakingly removing weeds from the bed under the olive tree. Meanwhile the Acacia tree is in leaf and wonderful scented flower and hums with bees - pictures above! 9 April 2007 Another exciting and interesting nearly 2 weeks. We returned last Thursday from our visit to Heather, Sam and Sas, her parents (with whom we stayed) and many friends in the East Midlands. We were enchanted by the baby, delighted that everyone is well and happy, and now rather miss them all although we are pleased to be back in rather warmer climes! Pictures of Heather below. Since we returned we have had another interesting and enjoyable day, visiting the Quaker meeting at Congénies. We went on Sunday morning and found ourselves part of a group of 18 including several English people, some Americans and a few French, mixing French and English both in ministry in meeting and in conversation. Afterwards there was a splendid bring and share lunch and we sat outside at the table until after 4 in the sunshine, among interesting and convivial people, and only reluctantly returned home to rescue our little dog! The Meeting promises to be fruitful for us despite my hesitations about religion - good fellowship and serious thought mingled with humour and friendship cannot be bad. There is a reasonable community of Quakers and adherents both in the village and the neighbouring Calvisson, and they appear to have some musical life there too so that may draw us back for other events. Although only a short distance away, because it's in the Gard département we don't hear as much of events in that area as we do of the Hérault, so I'm glad we have contacts there now. A momentous week - our new granddaughter Heather Rosemary was born on Monday morning and we look forward to meeting her very soon now. Her mother Saskia is well, and a friend told us Sam can't stop smiling, which is a bit how I feel too. On top of this I have made an astonishing discovery - to me at least - the very small Quaker community in France has its origins in a pacifist settlement in the nearby village of Congénies, only a few km from here, where there is still a Quaker meeting house and regular meeting. We had made contact with an old friend Brian who is connected with it, who gave us the information. I feel rather silly having know of its existence for 35 years but never made the geographical connection. Now, after years out of touch with the Society of Friends (which is Société des Amis in French) I do feel moved to go and find the meeting. The website is interesting, in both English and French. Also momentous though rather more prosaic is the completion of the wine store. The smart new air conditioning unit arrived last week and I was spurred on to install it, and put the door on, and fill all the insulation gaps, and now it is up and running, whirring quietly to itself as it keeps the temperature down as it should. Spring continues to advance despite a colder spell - lemon blossom and a tiny new lemon on the gift tree on our terrace, and lots of cherry blossom now that the apricot has finished. More pictures below. We have been tidying massive heaps of old wood in the garden and putting finishing touches to guest rooms in the house.
We have also had time for outings - before the last entry we went to a meeting in Anduze, north of here, of the AMA (association of amateur musicians) which gets together twice a year for a kind of 'party pieces' concert by members - we performed some Schubert songs and did not disgrace ourselves, and met other interesting people (French and a few English) which may lead to some more musical contacts. Anduze is a rather dramatic little old town in the upper reaches of the river Gard - the famous Roman aqueduct the Pont du Gard, one of our favourite spots, is further down the same river. Anduze also has a restored steam railway which we look forward to exploring in the future. Then last Sunday we had a call from a chamber music group in Montpellier - could Mary come and play the 'cello with them? She'd stopped playing for some weeks to allow her tendonitis to heal, but the temptation was to try so I drove her over and she had a great time playing Bach's 4th Brandenburg concerto (flutes, sadly, not recorders, but still...) and some Vivaldi, after which we were invited to a communal supper in the marvellous old house and enjoyed lively conversation about French politics and the differences between French and English culture and society! Finally, we heard that British friends who have bought a house in Italy have their house-warming in mid-July, so we are looking forward with excitement to our first Italian adventure later this year. 18 March 2007 The last fortnight has been quiet, sunny and warm after an incredibly windy Saturday a week ago. We have spent much of the time making another guest room ready, and I turned painter and decorator for the walls and ceiling although Mary still managed a lot of the woodwork despite her poorly arms. They are very gradually getting better, but to her frustration she really has to restrict her activities and I am reorganising my plans a bit to make sure I can do more. I've had time to think about the daily and weekly routine: here is a brief snapshot of our life in Lunel. We wake when Trudy is ready for her breakfast, usually around 8, and once she has been out in the garden and the coffee is on we drift down to breakfast. If we have visitors, I often get up a bit earlier and cycle out for bread and croissants. On Thursdays and Sundays there are markets in the town and we often walk up around 10 to look around and have a coffee. Les Halles, the indoor market, is open most mornings so we often go there for cheese (see photo above), vegetables, fruit or fish (for more on food and daily life see the food diary). Otherwise the market is mainly clothes and furnishing material, houseware and so on - the Sunday market also includes a flower and plant market with lots of good garden plants including vines of all varieties! Saturday is also a day to go into town for the flea market, chiefly remarkable for the variety of dross people seem optimistic they can sell. Most things stop at 12 or 1230 for lunch, so we have a quieter middle of the day. We have a light lunch and then there are sometimes afternoon activities, particularly for Mary who goes to a weekly sewing and social gathering at the Accueil de Ville, who also run Thursday afternoon walks. Our neighbours across the road also go on walks from time to time, and this week we both accompanied them on a wonderful sunlit walk among the vines around Saint Christol, one of the nearby villages and an especially ancient wine area - see photos attached. Supermarket trips are also easy in the afternoons since they stay open until 7. By early evening it is time for an apéritif, the English tv news including East Midlands Today and the Archers, then the French Journal, one of several tv news bulletins with usually an incredibly animated weather lady who leaps balletically in front of the maps in a variety of chic outfits. English tv (if we watch it) is of course an hour behind us here so we've plenty of time before a 9 pm film on Sky for example. We have enjoyed the occasional French film or documentary, and sometimes worry that we are not listening to enough French, but on the whole French tv seems to have even less to offer than English. Of course, this last few weeks has offered daytime viewing - the thrilling climax to the 6-nations rugby, with France narrowly pipping Ireland to the title (French tv shows all of this as well as BBC, but I find the English commentary more informative despite M's frequent annoyance with Brian Moore as 'resident expert'). There has also been the start of the cricket world cup. The hour-a-day highlights are at impossible times of the night no matter which country you are in, so I have to record them, but we were stunned and enthralled by the double whammy of Ireland beating Pakistan on St Patrick's Day yesterday - Pakistan, one of the leading cricketing nations, on their way home from the whole tournament - and Bangladesh demolishing the mighty Indian batting lineup. This show runs for weeks and we look forward to more thrills and spills as the tournament progresses. All the time we await news of the birth of our new grandchild to Saskia and Sam, and of course think of them both and wish them well - of course we shall visit them soon afterwards, and so there are travel plans to make as soon as we know when! And all the time the days are lighter, the garden is growing (we gave the grassy area scarcely deserving of the title 'lawn' its first mow yesterday) and trees are coming into bud and blossom. Apricot tree below.
4 March 2007 A long gap since the last entry - we were busy with health concerns, visitors and home improvements for most of February, but now we have a quieter time and so I can add to the news. Today we spent a bright sunny time in Aigues Mortes, a beautiful fortified town near the coast which we decided is one of our favourite places in the area for an outing, certainly in warm spring-like weather. The 13th century ramparts completely surround the town in an irregular rectangle and make a magnificent walk with panoramic views of the Camargue, canals and distant hills to the north, and as well as the typical tourist shops there are nice clothes and food shops and lots of good places to eat. Curiously the massive stonework reminded us of the fortifications in the Tunisian coastal town of Sousse which we also much enjoyed a few years ago. Photo gallery of Aigues Mortes is here. We were delighted to welcome over a dozen friends, some to stay and some for day visits, during February. In particular, we have to mention Roy who came for a week to make good his incredibly generous offer to help with redecoration, and completely refurbished one of the guest rooms well inside the week, as well as being able to relax and, we hope and think, enjoy himself for some of the time. I have taken inspiration from him since he left and started on redecoration of the downstairs bedroom. Some of our visitors were children, and they enjoyed playing in the garden where they made a wigwam from bamboo among other things. One had a fall which occasioned a precautionary evening trip to hospital (thankfully he was given the all-clear after seeing the paediatrician) in Montpellier with Mary as driver - not an easy trip, since it is (as I have said before) a sprawling place and difficult to navigate around. She was fortunate, and touched, that a driver she stopped to ask the way offered to lead her several km right to the door of A&E! Our brand-new Multi-purpose health centre in Lunel is great for adult emergencies but has no paediatrics... Amidst the pleasure of seeing friends and anticipating the birth of our new grandchild in a few weeks, we had the sadness of hearing news of the death of my cousin Jane's husband John - he had been a good friend and a marvellous host, a staunch supporter of family events and needs, and once again we mourn his passing and share her much greater pain and loss. In the intervals between entertaining, working on the house and the occasional outing we do have time to rest, relax, read and watch tv. As well as indulging our addictions to Match of the Day, we have enjoyed our new satellite access for the 6 Nations Rugby and have cheered Ireland and France as much as we have lamented the variable form of the English team (and their over-reliance on the boot of Jonny Wilkinson). More rugby to come, and the cricket world cup is not far away although without paying for expensive sports channels we shall be restricted to highlights. On Friday we went on an excursion to Aniane to visit the wine Caveau there, run by our neighbours' (Monique and Michel) brother/in law. We were very warmly received - more in the wine diary. The drive past Montpellier was to start with a struggle of traffic jams and endless circuitous signposted routes through industrial estates - despite the gracious centre of the city, we have found the outlying areas often hopelessly confusing to drive around, but now we are beginning to find better and shorter ways. This week has been quite a cultural one - the invitations from the Mairie fall thick and fast now. A week ago was the opening of an exhibition at the Library of the extraordinary work of the 18th century natural history illustrator Buffon (Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon actually), marking the 300th anniversary of his death. The town had produced a magnificent richly illustrated catalogue of his bird illustrations, and there are talks all through the 2 months of the exhibition including one in March on birds of the Camargue today. Then last Thursday there was the unveiling of a 'totem' or information panel in one of the old streets of Lunel, near the old synagogue, on the flourishing mediaeval Jewish community here. Those we asked were not very sure if there is a Jewish presence here now - such is the deadening effect of the secular state that cultural and religious identity is often rather camouflaged - but it was a short, dignified ceremony and I will send you a photo of the said totem when it is not surrounded by Mayoral parties and suchlike. The ceremony was arranged with the Montpellier Institut Universitaire Euro-Méditerranée Maïmonide - the Jewish community flourished in the Languedoc following expulsion from Spain, and the eponymous Maïmon was a 12th century rabbi whose brief biography is at the top of the Institut's web page. Finally this weekend we have been discovering about the Cabanes de Lunel. These small, often ramshackle but sometimes well-built and well-maintained buildings are found in the countryside near waterways and elsewhere all over the Languedoc. Sometimes they are summer huts for fishing or hunting, but often quite well-equipped dwellings used as holiday or weekend homes. The Lunel Cabanes are along the Canal a few km south of the town, and there are lots - perhaps 100 - on either side of the water. Many have pens of ducks - decoy ducks - perched on the water's edge, and there are boats and fishing nets, dogs in the compounds and signs of life all around at the weekend certainly. Our discoveries started yesterday evening at another cultural event, the opening of an exhibition by artists and students from a Montpellier faculty who had attempted to capture both the traditions of cabanes going back over a century, the modern manifestations (and the tension between what is now cultural heritage and what is technically illegal residential development!) and some design students' musings on new crossings for the Canal - there's only one little bridge in the entire 10+ km length. We were impressed again by the commitment of the Town to cultural and artistic expression (certainly not just promoting local artists). The exhibition was very moving and the stories of the older family cabanes and their owners fascinating, and today we took a picnic down the main road towards La Grande Motte and found the canalside walk past and opposite the Cabanes. I was reminded of the north European beach hut culture, but the buildings here are much more diverse in size and style, some approaching proper houses. Photos click here. Finally we got Sky tv this week - another workman (see below for the first one!) walking up and down the roof to fix the satellite dish, which I realised is possible here because roofs are generally less steep and made of stronger tiles than they are in England. We don't plan to watch UK tv all the time, but are glad of some things including a more regular dose of the Archers, Match of the Day, a bit of cricket news and, amusingly, BBC East Midlands Today which we enjoyed in Wirksworth but could not get in Mansfield (where we were deemed to belong in Yorkshire) and now get lound and clear in the S of F. Funny world! 3 February 2007 Several people have commented that there has been a gap in this diary - sorry, but now that we are settling into our new house there is so much to do that there has been less time to keep up the website than there was when we were in transit. I will try to keep up entries in February, but have also been working on the French site which takes time away from updating the English side. This diary incidentally is not being translated - just too much, so apologies to our French friends who have to struggle with this foreign language. Jeff and Fi came and went (too quickly) - it was lovely to see them and fitting that our first guests were family, but we very much look forward to having more visitors too. Though there is a trickle of enquiries there is lots of space and you are encouraged to ask, plan and come! Now we look forward to visiting England in March when Saskia and Sam's baby, our second grandchild, is due. The week following their departure was extraordinary in 2 ways - first the weather and second the death of l'Abbé Pierre. He was (in a peculiarly French way) the symbol of action against poverty, the founder of Emmaus - a huge national charity - and an icon of moral virtue who filled the news bulletins day after day. In the UK the cult of personality in charities has more or less disappeared, and 'figureheads' are either viewed with suspicion or move on rapidly to peerages! But here there is a real sense of identity with someone of such integrity, which is only partly explained by the need to have someone to stand up for things we somehow do not have the energy or consistency for. As for the weather, anyone who tells me that the British are peculiarly unprepared for snow needs to see some of the news bulletins here - long sequences of people slithering over icy roads or cars overturned in ditches, and of oil lorries making last-minute mercy dashes to people who had not thought to fill their central heating tanks. We are smug, having gas heating (which is not thought to be over-expensive here - we will see when the bills come!) Here in Lunel there is only snow every 50 years, so we have had more frost, and cold winds for odd days, but mostly it's still been sunny. After the worst of the cold (which affected the mountainous areas - hooray for ski-ers - and the central Massif more than us) we took a break for a magical trip into the Diois to see friends Pierre and Michelle. The photo gallery (click link) shows our walk among the vines between Châtillon and St Roman last Sunday, under the snow-dusted Glandasse. We were delighted by the bright sunshine there too, and surprised at so little snow in the east - apart from the very tops of the mountains and areas of valley in constant shade, there was none showing. Since our return I have been busy building our wine store and setting up the wine racks. It's about half done, and in the end our extensive collection should be well isolated from the warm weather by the time it arrives. Around the house we have had all sorts of plumbing done this week - repairing leaks and fitting new taps - and also encountered Pierry the odd-job man who walked up the roof and fixed the rattling tiles capping the chimney - now when the north wind blows we (and of course our guests) can sleep easy! Here he is on the roof... Today, I went to Montpellier and experienced both a beautiful spring-like day - omelette and salad sitting outside in the sunshine at a snack bar - and the magnificent, open and modern city centre and amazing 2 tram lines that now operate across the city. I also bought hi-tech walking poles (Jeff's suggestion to take strain off my knee) which prove to be excellent, and found Mary some more music groups to investigate for her 'cello playing. Since we went to the mayor's reception in January, we've been bombarded with invitations to art exhibitions and talks about culture in Lunel. We went to our first tonight, a combination of paintings and sculpture by two women artists both very much taken up with Spanish themes - flamenco and bull-fighting - which are big here. Some very nice sketches, especially of bull scenes, which were more enticing than the sculpture. We decided to skip the speeches and apéritif since we did not know anyone and they all knew each other - but are working out ways of getting to know people in future! Invitations to other events follow at the rate of one or two a week! Life goes on, and we're looking forward to welcoming Jeff and Fi in a few days as our first staying guests. There's a gap in writing this because I was busy with other things - a 1900 km trip by car to England and back last week to fetch some of our wine (more in the wine diary about this); trying to sort the electricity in the absence of any sign of promised electricians (involves lighting all lights, lamps and sockets, pulling out one fuse at a time and seeing what goes out. Some mad results including 2 fuses especially for one little light in the garage, and others which affect both lights and power points - not at all proper any more in France than in England!); using my new chain saw to excellent effect; and trying to find time for relaxation which is not very easy. We've bought a new oven, installed our free view telly with a new aerial, and attended two very different functions. One was a sort of Mayor's annual meeting to publicise the Council's plans for Lunel in 2007 - a huge hall packed with people standing to watch a video and then the man himself speaking in front of his huge video image, followed by a lot of networking over drinks and nibbles. We'd been taken to this by kind neighbours who knew lots of people and introduced us to many of them. Then the following day we went to an afternoon gathering arranged by the Accueil de Ville, the Association we've joined which welcomes newcomers. Mary has also been on a walk they organised at the seaside and goes to a sewing and knitting group there each week. This occasion was a kind of tea dance with the sweet galettes (pastry/cakes) which are traditionally eaten in France at Epiphany, entertainment from the members' choir and from a singer-cum-trumpeter with accordionist and canned backing performing lots of popular songs of which we, of course, knew none. But it was a friendly, lively afternoon, and the songs were as well-known to almost everyone else as our music-hall songs and wartime standards are in the UK, and lots of people got up to dance. The membership is mostly of people within a few years of our age or older, almost all French. 7 January 2007 Our year has begun well this week with all sorts of practical occupations including a start on the garden. First, however, we had to stack 4 stères (roughly 4 m3) of wood which literally fell of the back of a lorry (one we had asked to turn up!) into our drive. This will keep our cheminée going well into 2008 it seems to me. I was very proud of the stacks, constructed (as so often with practical tasks here) with the aid of our splendid neighbour Michel. My first effort was a teetering mountain - the final 2 are models of neat stability. Our first major task in the garden was to remove about half the bamboo forest that has colonised the bottom corner. We bought splendid ratchet cutters that claimed to (and did) cut through 50mm stems (nearly 2 inches in old money...), and set to work. Most of the poles were 20 ft, many over 30 ft long and, like stacking the wood, it was more than a day's work to cut them down, trim off the foliage and bundle it for the organic waste skip. We have become regulars at the local déchetterie (waste disposal site)! I am really enjoying the physical labour, a big change from sitting in offices and meetings and cars all day. As I write Mary has just got back from collecting our post from La Tamarissière. It's forwarded from England, and it would be all right if we hadn't told almost everyone involved that we had moved, weeks or even months ago - hard to know what to do when people ignore repeated letters and emails. But thanks to all of you who have kept up to date! You can see some of all this in pictures in the photo gallery attached. I had resisted putting pictures of the inside of the house on the site until we had decorated, but we are proud of what we have done so far and the decoration will take a while, so there are some of the inside too to be going on with. 2 January 2007
Happy New Year to everyone! We returned yesterday from our overnight stay in Valquières where we stayed with our friend Régine (10 of us altogether) to see in the new year in traditional French style. The house, in a little village high in the hills beyond Bédarieux, is old and beautifully decorated. We ate a memorable meal of oysters (not for Jon, who propped up the bar all the same!) foie gras, duck breasts, cheese and sweets, and exchanged gifts. The following morning we walked above the village - scenes above - before returning to Lunel after lunch. No sooner were we home than we were welcomed to drinks, the another impromptu new year meal, with neighbours. For me (as well as Mary) the day had been concentrated listening to and speaking in French, but although M does a lot of the talking, I felt quite at home. However much we miss everyone in England, our welcome here has been marvellous, and we are beginning 2007 with anticipation.
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