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The Mayor sent us this card which shows many local features! The last diary entry of 2008, so I'll start by wishing everyone a very happy and successful 2009. One used to say 'prosperous' but that hardly fits the case in these recession-hit times. Last week some bishops in England criticised Govt policies of 'spending your way out of recession', and there are certainly some huge paradoxes - only people with any money can spend their way out of anything, and governments should surely be concerned for the poorest; then, apparently we are still being encouraged to borrow not save, and our leaders set the tone for that by borrowing like crazy; and on top of that there is talk of multi-million rescues of environmentally unsound industries such as car manufacture, the cheapest kinds of long-distance travel (air) are also bad for the planet, and rail is hopelessly expensive and difficult to book. Rant over. In France we seem to hear far less of recession but it is there all the same, and our closest and friendliest hardware store is closing down in a couple of weeks. We have had a quiet Christmas week, starting with the 9 Lessons & Carols my choir Crème Franglaise did in the Abbatiale at St Gilles on 21 December, in a very cold church (authenticity can be taken too far, but the acoustic was lovely). Mary and I both read lessons, we sang some marvellous music pretty well, and there was a reasonable congregation. The conducting was shared between David Austin who is our usual director and Philip Baxter who had planned the service. It was his final appearance at the Abbatiale as organist, so a very significant moment. Afterwards we all went back to his house for a shared meal. The week that followed has been cold and to start with bright although it is now cloudy. We've spent a lot of time at home in front of the fire, blazing with some of the wood we have stored and cut ready for the winter - very cosy. We've had books, radio and television to entertain us - tv highlights have included lots of Wallace & Gromit in both French and English, Jane Austen's Emma (Kate Beckinsale in a very faithful adaptation) and several doses of match of the day which have left Liverpool on top of the premiership to my delight, and Arsenal firing on 2 or 3 cylinders to Mary's disappointment. We've also indulged in several episodes from our complete Morse! But (in case we sound like complete puddings) we've also walked into town quite regularly, enjoyed coffees in our usual Bar des Sports, and been out to meals with friends. We ate the traditional French Christmas main meal at Daniel & Claire's house in Fontanès with some of their family which was really friendly and enjoyable, and then on Christmas Day we ate as usual at the restaurant l'Authentic with other French friends Christine and Martial and their daughter. The meal was superb - if you are interested you can see the menu and some pictures here. Also, we had apéritifs here for neighbours and others just before Christmas with some enthusiastic carol singing. So we feel as if our Christmas this year has been quite French where social contacts are concerned. On New Year's eve we'll be eating with Danish (and other nationality) friends in Sommières, again planning for everyone to bring and share part of the food and the wine. Above all we have had so much to be thankful for in the messages and letters from friends and family, by email, on Facebook and by post. Our French friends cannot quite believe that so many Christmas cards could arrive at once and keep asking if they are all this year's. If we were short of decoration we might I suppose bring out a collection of previous years', but they mostly get recycled in January of course! And among our phone messages came one particularly welcome one from Sam, that he and Sas are formally engaged. We are already happy that they and Heather have become such a welcome new corner of our family and this is icing on the cake. Another good reason to look forward to 2009...
20 December 2008 The irony of writing this diary is that the more there is to write about the less time there is to write it. Here we are nearly at Christmas and in the middle of choir concerts, and only my insomnia has offered me the chance to write now. Most of December has been taken up with music, and much of it has involved driving some way into the hills to the north and west. Even in winter the scenery is spectacular, and I must remember to take my camera and record some of the journeys - to Quissac, Anduze, Ganges and Le Vigan. We repeat often that though we would not want to live in the Cevennes we enjoy our visits, at least when the weather does not make driving too difficult. I have added a third choir, which meets alternately in Castelnau and Lodève, to the 2 I already sing with in Lunel. Happily the 3rd meets only once a month, and I started going because Mary is playing 'cello continuo with them for the Vivaldi Gloria which I like a lot. We'd been to Lodève once before in 2006 and found it a bit gloomy, but it was a false impression and when we went early for our rehearsal this month we found a nice restaurant for lunch, an active market and a nice walk through the town. Since then the other choirs have both had Christmas concerts. Méli Mélo is a French choir of 50+, formed by merging two choirs from nearby villages Saint Just and Marsillargues, doing quite traditional French and Occitan Christmas pieces for a concert in a chapel in Lunel and another shorter one in an old people's home in Marsillargues. Crème Franglaise is a small mainly English choir based in Lunel and we've mixed Christmas carols with popular 20th century music for concerts in Marseillan, Lunel and Sommières (the last 2 last night), as well as preparing for an Anglican 9 Lessons & Carols in Saint Gilles this weekend. It's been a lot of work particularly since I'm secretary and manage the website for Crème Franglaise. And on top of the choirs I have my singing lessons most weeks with my teacher Christian at his home in Lavérune, and also singing regularly with my pianist friend Nathalie. In between whiles we have done some wine tasting with friends, and Mary has decorated the downstairs office (I shifted everything into one of the upstairs bedrooms to clear the room, so I'm writing in the temporary office just now). And we've also entertained the French conversation group here a couple of times this month, with splendid shared meals for 16 or so each time after our hard work improving our language skills. We are very pleased with our large living room, which can easily take a long table for 25 if need be with the settees pushed back, when the weather drives us inside for a few winter months! We shall spend a relatively quiet Christmas here this year, although just beforehand we have some more pilgrims on the route from Arles towards Compostela staying overnight, and since they've asked for an evening meal we've decided to do a traditional English Christmas dinner. Otherwise we have invitations to friends and doubtless some somnolent telly to occupy us. We have been cheered by seasonal greetings from many friends in the UK and elsewhere, and feel very glad to know so many lovely people. This is another chance to wish everyone we know a very happy Christmas and a good start to 2009. Life in Lunel Sometimes life in France seems very different to our English experience: at other times there are sudden startling similarities. I’ve written before about cuts in council grants to voluntary associations – for example the cinema festival, or the local adult education centre (Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture) – and now Mary has just heard that the organisation she helped, which provided extra reading and other help to primary aged children out of school, has lost virtually all its money. For her it’s a real loss of a weekly activity which she enjoyed despite the challenges – for the kids concerned there is obviously even more at stake. Garden and house So we have had even more time than expected to clear up the garden before winter. Now it is quite cold despite a lot of sunshine, but it’s also wetter at times. With the autumn rain and gales the leaves have blown down and the last flowers have withered so shrubs and vines can be cut back. For my part I have been sorting and cutting wood: this year we knew we must order 40 cm pieces to fit our enclosed fireplace (called an insert – it has a glass front and side, in one corner of the room) but last year when new to it we got a load of 50 cm wood delivered and every single bit had to be chain-sawed. I had to wait because the chain saw I got when we arrived packed up under the strain of cutting up fibrous palm tree (see below), but miraculously they deemed it still under guarantee so I got a brand new one! So an afternoon or two cutting and stacking in bright sunshine and the old wood is stacked in front of the new and ready to burn.
because few of the members read music it takes some time to learn pieces, but when learnt they are often performed with more feeling because many people know them by heart and are not buried in their scores as I sometimes am. You can see me here in a cat mask singing a composite piece of (arrangements of well-known) Offenbach/Rossini on the feline theme… On the following day we set out to the Cevennes to lunch with a recorder-playing friend where we played music (with another couple) for the afternoon. The friend is a goat farmer whose cheese we have often sampled; but it was the first time we’d visited his house, and we were stunned by the beauty of the Gardon valley as we wound our way north from Anduze to his turning, and then climbed another 4½ km until some llamas standing in a field announced that we’d arrived. Another half km of track and there was the house perched overlooking a sweep of countryside. Few people (except regulars) make it up there to buy cheese despite the signs at the end of the road – they sell the cheese on various nearby markets – and they were celebrating because after over 30 years as tenants and protracted negotiations with the elderly landowner they are eventually buying their farm this week. They are delighted that their son whom we met is set to take over the operation in due course. We had quite a day with a lovely meal on the way back that evening with good friends near Quissac and a chance to sample some interesting wines from Collioure (Roussillon) near the Spanish border.8 November 2008
As soon as that finished I had to fly to England for my aunt Ida's funeral - she was 94 and had had a good life until she became quite ill in the last couple of years, but it was a very sad occasion for her family, and I was glad to be there to support my cousins. So I'm just back, and sitting beside a choir rehearsal in which I am not, for a change, a participant, while Mary plays 'cello continuo, and writing this. But I have been undergoing a major cultural education in the past few weeks getting into Facebook, on which you can find all sorts of extra things about our lives - if you are not already logged in, go do it and send me a Friend request, then you will be able to see more about the Mandolin Festival and lots else including some of the family history I have been chasing up at the prompting of some of my relations met over the funeral period. But don't worry, I will not give up on the website! To finish, some pics of M and others in the Mandolin Festival canteen.
13 October 2008
6 October 2008 We are in a period of cooler but gloriously clear and sunny autumn weather, and in the midst of family visits - my cousin Jane was here until yesterday and now my sister Pam has come to celebrate her 60th birthday. A couple of weeks ago I returned from an astonishing week at a course singing renaissance consort music with three exceptional tutors, at La Maison Verte in Roujan. One of the tutors, an old friend Fran Steele, runs the centre with his wife Anne, and they provided a comfortable residential centre (with fantastic food) for the course in this old maison de vigneron. The music we performed was simply amazing in both variety and beauty, secular and sacred from the 16th and early 17th centuries, and our voices were well-tested with 3 sessions of singing every day as well as the extra pieces many of us sang for fun in the evenings. Highlights for me included church music by Byrd and Victoria and my first experiences of singing Monteverdi madrigals in which the older, purer style of 16th century polyphony is replaced by far more dramatic and overtly emotional declamation half-way to the new operatic ideas of the 17th. This experience and learning will live with me for a long time to come and gives me confidence to try and get together a regular group to sing renaissance music - another course member Josh Haberman has written a terrific blog on the course. Our other major adventure this month has been to become a destination for pilgrims walking the route towards Compostela, from Arles through Montpellier and on to Toulouse. A few weeks ago the Office de Tourisme caught up with the fact that we publicise our B&B through this site, and pointed out that we need to register formally through the Mairie. We'd been wondering whether to make much of this or quietly to let it drop - although we make a small charge to cover costs to friends who come (unless they have kindly accommodated us over the years), we'd had hardly any enquiries from strangers until now. But we decided to go ahead and register, which turned out to be simple enough, and immediately we had a call asking if a German pilgrim could come and stay, which he did. Since then there has been a French couple, and it seems likely that there will be more since we are not expensive and Lunel is only a few km off the route which passes north following more or less the route of the old Roman Via Domitia. We think we shall find it interesting to share some of the pilgrims' tales, and so plan to register in the guides to accommodation on the route and see what happens. Back to a written diary – with some photos attached – for most of August.
Our latest visitors, our son Sam with partner Saskia and our granddaughter Heather, now 16 months old, came to stay for the end of the jazz festival in Lunel, and then we all set out for a few days in Barcelona. It’s not far to drive but it was our first trip (and theirs) to this part of Spain where most signs and notices are bilingual in Catalonian as well as Spanish. You can see the transition between French and Spanish in the words and phrases of this local language which straddles the border country between Perpignan and north-eastern Spain. For
adults the city of Barcelona is full of galleries and museums and fine
buildings and culture of all sorts.
We have resolved to return soon to catch up on these.
But with a small child the landscape changes, and although we saw
Gaudi’s work in the Sagrada Familia and the Parc Guëll, we were also
much occupied with reading story books and visiting the zoo, in many
ways the highlight of our trip!
After
dropping the family at Girona airport we went to see the beautiful
mediaeval city – well worth a visit, with a beautifully laid-out
Jewish museum; and then on to Figueres to look at the Dali
museum, which
was absolutely fantastic. Photo
galleries for both these can be found by clicking the links above (note
in the Dali that the jewellery is comparatively really small and very
detailed: the photos are all taken at very close range). Since
then, in continuing hot summer weather, we have had a lot of music with
friends from the Association des Musiciens Amateurs, and we also visited
vineyards in the Rhône valley again and went to a lovely concert near
Sommières - more details on the music page.
The panoramas which adorn this part of the diary are the result
of a new bit of software I got with my new camera (see photo page for
more details).
Now la rentrée is upon us – not so much anxiety for us as for the mass of French parents and children frantically making sure that everything and everyone is ready for the new school year, but the restart of many regular activities such as Mary’s English conversation and my singing lessons.
4 August 2008 Here's a photo diary for the last week. Almost a month gone by, and such a busy one too. I am going to try to tell the story in pictures, and I hope they will guide you through so - click here to begin. I'll be interested to know your reactions. 3 July 2008 This is a brief note looking forward to the month to come - the festival in Lunel, visits of friends and family and, we hope, more fine weather. The temperatures have remained over 30, and we have opened every window in sight (easy with the new mosquito blinds) and slept downstairs during the hottest nights. Tonight we have our farewell party for our lovely neighbours Hélène and David and their three little boys. some of you will recall the email I sent in case anyone wanted to buy their house - it is still not sold and they have taken the risk of a bridging loan because they were so keen on their new house north east of here in a village outside Nîmes. This evening we shall have 20 or so neighbours together in our garden to say goodbye. Next Sunday is the official opening of the bridge over the canal just south of us. It will make a nice 1-2 km circuit for walks and outings, and the bridge itself was delivered in a single impressive piece last week. You can see an article (in French - go on, try it!) and picture when the bridge was lowered into place here. Last Sunday we were playing music in the Cevennes with friends from AMA - sous les tilleuls (or under the lime trees, although that is actually where we ate lunch) - the music was indoors afterwards; then on Monday we were at the beautiful village home of my singing teacher Christian for a concert given by his various pupils. Mary played for some of them, and my accompanist Nathalie came to play for me in 6 songs from Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and stayed to accompany others, at sight and to wild acclaim! She left for another engagement and Mary and I stayed on to eat and drink in the twilit garden, a lovely evening. Next September I am going to become one of his private pupils and spend an hour a fortnight working with him at his house, instead of continuing at the adult class he runs on Monday mornings in Lunel - it will be better for me although in any case the classes are threatened by cuts in the budget here as often with adult classes in the UK... Since I wrote about Mary's talk with the adjoint de la culture, M Moysan, we have heard that the council is not only cutting its grant to the Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture (MJC) which organises the adult classes, but also to the cinema festival which takes place each February. The mayor, apparently, thinks they should not give grants to organisations which criticise them. So much for developing culture in Lunel - we shall go on trying though. Mary has just got back from visiting Ed, Charmaine and Isla in Devon. Despite our feeling so settled here we do miss our family, so she was delighted to have a few days with them; we were also delighted to receive Community Fayre, the Wirksworth community newspaper now astonishingly in its 145th edition (we were there when it began!) with a lovely article about Sam which you can see here. I hope summer holidays go well for everyone - they certainly look full and interesting for us. I am not sure how much more I will get round to writing in July, so don't hold your breath! I began writing this entry over a week ago and then was so busy I've only just found time to finish it. That means there's a lot to tell.
Music We have actually been at home rather less than usual though, partly because of even more musical activities. I am now meeting my pianist Nathalie to rehearse Schubert - we hope to perform Die schöne Müllerin in the autumn - and I'm working on the same pieces with my singing teacher Christian each Monday morning. In fact, a few weeks ago Mary came with me and we met several of his other pupils for a morning singing to one another - Mary played for everyone, and afterwards we went for lunch together at our favourite restaurant l'Authentic. Although I have known the cycle for many years, I have really enjoyed working intensively on them with both Nathalie and Christian, and feel fortunate to have found a teacher and an accompanist in many ways as good as I ever had in the UK. I'm also of course relieved and delighted to have a voice to sing with, although it will take some time to recover the strength it had before my throat troubles. Mary meanwhile has been busy with the 'cello, with a concert in Montpellier last Saturday (Dido and Aeneas, she and another cellist supporting the choir bass line) and another in Celleneuve (west of Montpellier) in a fortnight. And we both had three excellent afternoons in a row playing recorder quintets with three AMA friends near Anduze. In fact the first day we met in the music school in Anduze, but the room we played in had so much echo we couldn't hear one another properly, so we were relieved and delighted when one of the players Jean invited us to his house for the remaining two days. He has a lovely large living room in which we played, and on top of that he lives in a little village high in the Cevennes north of Anduze and has stunning views from his long, gallery-like glassed-in terrace, so we had lots to enjoy in addition to the beautiful scenery on the drives to and from the rehearsals each day. Last weekend was the fête de la musique in every town and village across France, and we were out and about all the time - on Saturday morning playing recorders in the street in Lunel, which drew some appreciative comments although there were not huge crowds. I think in the past this kind of impromptu un-amplified music was very much part of the annual fête de la musique, but these days it's mainly more staged concerts in the streets in the evening, so we were very different from most of what happened in Lunel. In the afternoon we went to Celleneuve where Mary played 'cello with the band she rehearses with each Tuesday evening - like many music schools the one there was holding its annual end of term concert with all the pupils playing to admiring parents as well as adult groups. Mary's played a variety of things including some latin american music and extracts from the Carnival of the Animals.
Then on Saturday evening we went to Liouc, a tiny village near Quissac (north of here) for a band concert (pic below) in which our friend David was playing followed by a communal meal together. We sat in the little village square on benches and listened to music with our drinks, then ate paella and drank some wine - a lovely warm midsummer evening. On Sunday we returned to the Prieuré de Saint Julien where we'd been to our recorder course in May) for a day's playing and a concert in the late afternoon (see above and below) - most of the women had splendid costumes adding to the 'early music' atmosphere of the beautiful old church.
On top of all this we went to two concerts in the early music festival in the cathedral at Maguelone, on the coast south of here. It is an extraordinary setting out amid the coastal lakes and marshes (looking for nice photos I discovered this blog which conveys the atmosphere of the area well in words and photos). You drive to the parking field along a causeway between the beach and sea on one side and the lagoons on the other, then walk a good distance from the car park in the dusk - we saw nesting waders on all the tussocks in the water beside the track as we walked. One of the concerts this year in particular, a sort of musical portrait and biography of Michel Lambert, a 17th century French musician and composer by two singers and a theorbo player, was wonderful, beautifully put together and presented with the music performed in elegant and impeccable period style. This is the 25th year of the Festival, which is run entirely by voluntary effort and has drawn absolutely outstanding musicians over the years - long may it continue. Life in and around Lunel A couple of weeks ago Mary went to see the adjoint (elected member of the council) responsible for culture in Lunel, to talk to him about improving cultural life here. She has written about their discussion in more detail here. We have had two occasions to visit the catholic church in Lunel, the first the confirmation of our neighbour's daughter (with a good party following for family and friends on their newly completed terrace) and then sadly the following week the funeral of a well-respected local man, Jacques Lafont (who had died suddenly, at I guess about our age, and whom we knew slightly through the family of one of our good friends) - the latter packed the church, and in both cases one had the feeling of being in the centre of community life, as a parish church sometimes is in England, despite the increasingly secular character of life in both countries. We have enjoyed social contacts and shared meals often in the past few weeks as we so frequently do, revelling in the new-found circle of friends we have found in France. Last Friday we were the only English people at a splendid house-warming in a little village called Salinelles. It was marvellous to see another spacious house and to share the pleasure of the owners (both leading members of the RERS network around Sommières) in the results of their hard work in transforming it over the past 18 months, and above all to enjoy the warmth and company of a circle of people we have come to know well over the same period. Yesterday I was once again with the French conversation group, again at a different house, this one belonging to new Danish friends, with a lovely salt water pool and a purpose made pétanque ground on which we whiled away some of the afternoon after another wonderful shared lunch. I was especially pleased to have spent some of the time in English conversation with a young French woman whose English is already pretty good, discussing some current French news including Sarkozy's moves to change the national defence policy and move closer to NATO, and his (alleged) involvement in forcing the retirement of iconic tv news-reader Patrick Poirvre Darvor ( who apparently likened Sarko to a little boy when he attended his first G8 summit) with one of S's glamorous female friends... The president of course says all this happened without his intervention - he is much too busy with more important things! On a couple of weekends ago we went to an open morning at a local horticultural producers', run by Christine and Martial, a couple who grow things as far as possible using natural pest control and fertilisers, and who sell their produce each week on a market stall. We don't have many outdoor food stalls here because the proprietors of the covered market (Les Halles) fear too much competition, but we always buy salads and other vegetables and, occasionally, fruit from this stall, and our conducted tour with Christine was really interesting, especially for the descriptions of the various insects and other beasts used to keep nastier things in check as well as to pollinate the crops. There are huge black beetle-like creatures here, called bourdons (a kind of bumble bee), which are apparently far better for that than other bees because the others tend to attack you a lot especially in stormy weather in poly-tunnels! Christine is passionate about her chosen work, and also runs a voluntary association called Graines de Lune which encourages children to get involved in gardening - we collected for it when we played our music in Lunel last weekend. Pictures of the open morning below.
Weather It's been raining here for a week or more on and off, and shows little sign of stopping for a few days yet. Only our friends Lesley and Caroline who came for a wet week last year will really recognise this in normally sunny Lunel, but apparently this is African rain, complete with sand which is over all the cars and garden tables. It helps the plants grow anyway, and it's not at all cold, but we would like the sun back soon! On Wednesday night we had another round of thunder and lightning and the electricity went off (luckily I could find the torch and flick the trip switch back on). Of course people here just call 'English weather' to us as if we'd brought it with us, but in fact further north (if not in the UK) things are far better - a French friend holidaying in Brittany was suffering from sunburn yesterday! Here and there Since I wrote last we have been busy with music and trips as well as sorting out my health problems (see health diary, which also has an excellent pen portrait - by our friend Sheila Compton - of our French teacher and mentor Marcel: have a look). We had a lovely day out in Montpellier with friends Daniel and Claire who were students there and offered to show us round - in fact, we all enjoyed the guided tour organised by the Tourist Office in the afternoon, and saw sights normally not open to casual visitors including the restored mediaeval Jewish ritual bath which is kept clean and fresh by an underground spring, and panoramic views from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Photo gallery here. Then we went towards Toulouse for a couple of days to visit our friend Barry near Revel. He lives in a wonderful, comfortable old house in a quiet rural corner, and we enjoyed talking to him about his return visit after many years to his native South Africa, before a circuitous journey back. He had recommended that we visit the église rupestre (literally a cave church) at Vals, so we drove south through Castelnaudary and across very pretty hilly countryside towards the dramatic backdrop of the Pyrenees. The little church, which is on the pilgrim route from Toulouse to Santiago di Compostela over the border in Spain, is approached up steps leading between two huge boulders to the 12th century crypt, and then you climb through layers of history towards the top beneath the 16th century tower. It was a lovely visit, and we must return because we had no time to more than glance at the nearby town of Mirepoix which everyone tells us is a must. We had to head on to an appointment with a wine maker the other side of Carcassonne in the Minervois, before driving back to Lunel, criss-crossing the Canal du Midi in the evening sunshine. No photos this time - I decided not to take my camera and to use my own eyes rather than the electronic rectangle that so often dominates my view of things! We also went to Anduze again to play music with friends in AMA (the association of amateur musicians) and this time I had my camera, so here are a few photos to finish with.
12 May 2008 Into the hills - the last fortnight has seen us making two musical excursions into the hills. The first, over the long weekend at the beginning of the month, was for a 4-day recorder course run by the Association Musique Ancienne - there were 5 of us including Mary and me and two tutors, so we had a lot of individual attention and worked in detail on pieces by Bach, Telemann, Van Eyck and Pepusch. The music and intensive work for whole days was tiring - we don't work in that kind of concentrated way on anything now - but very rewarding. The enjoyment was enhanced by the wonderful surroundings at the Prieuré de Saint Julien in the regional park of the Haut Languedoc - a lovely hilltop setting surrounded by woods and vines. We stayed in a gîte for the whole course, and so were relaxed with Trudy a well-behaved and welcome companion.
Then yesterday we were invited into the Cevennnes near Saint Jean du Gard to view a small church where we may do an informal recorder recital neat year. We took our recorders and tried the acoustic with some duets. It's St-Flour du Pompidou (by the tiny village of Le Pompidou) and it's one of 7 12th century Romanesque churches scattered across the spectacular valleys of the Gardon and Lozère in the dramatic landscape of the high Cevennes. Our friend (who is arranging the concert) drove us up the long winding corniche lined with groves of sweet chestnuts, with increasingly breathtaking views of the two valleys, and the little church when we came to it hidden down a steep track below the village was charming and wonderful for music. We returned via lunch on the terrace of a good simple restaurant by the Gardon and then wound down back roads by the river where we found a spectaular old mill. You can find out more about this and the other churches on a website about the area: photos of our trip below.
At home - plumbing dramas this month, with a hot water pipe in the garage springing two leaks in quick succession and then, we notice, the same pipe is leaking under the floor near the bathroom so we are waiting for the plumber to track down the latest leak, and wonder whether it will be better to run a new pipe above ground - the old one seems to be wearing out and who knows where it may leak next! Also, the clutch on the car went and Mary was stuck waiting for the breakdown service in Montpellier when she should have been playing in her chamber group. We are very fortunate that our good neighbours have come up trumps again and lent us a car until ours is repaired, and I am even more grateful to the friend with plumbing experience who is going to help us bypass our leak with a new hot water pipe to the bathrooms! And the plumber who did the bathroom alterations was very worried when he heard there was a leak, so although we'd decided not to employ him to do repairs he's offered to come and do a check without charge to make sure there is no other source of leakage. The generosity and helpfulness of people continues to astonish us In the garden - but it is not all doom and gloom - the garden is looking lovely and we have had a nightingale serenading us day and night for the last few weeks. Birds are often in our mind - yesterday we found a pied flycatcher sitting still and apparently tired for several minutes on a low branch before it continued its migratory flight north, and a few weeks ago a sparrow hawk crashed into our plate glass terrace door and stunned itself - Mary knew what to do to pacify it by covering it with a cloth and removing it gently to the lawn and we were relieved when it regained its composure and took off a few minutes later. I only regret not having photographed it - just did not think quickly in the surprise of the moment. And the weather has been good enough for us to eat outside a lot - yesterday we had a magnificent Italian wine tasting - more in the wine diary - and bring and share meal with 14 people, some English, some French. At the same time it has rained a lot in short bursts - 40 mm in one night last week - but (unlike the water under our floor and in the walls) the rainfall vanishes in no time. Spring is certainly here - the trees along the roads are full of young green though not yet giving the dense shade that's so welcome later in the summer, and the vineyards are also bursting with new leaves - it's a special pleasure of course for wine enthusiasts to see this, and seems more of a miracle because the little pruned stumps of vine seem incapable of bursting forth to produce the profusion of grapes we know will be ready to harvest in 6 months or so. This week we have seen the poppies springing bright like speckled carpets in the fields and dotted along the verges - I must take good photos this year. The plunging value of the £ has forced many British people, both residents here and potential visitors, to think about money, and more than one of you has asked me why I haven't mentioned it. Well, in one way it is like bad weather - nobody has found a way of avoiding its effects and you just need to be as sure as you can that the roof does not leak or risk blowing off. But certainly we have friends in France who are feeling the pinch and I realise how easy it is to assume that exchange rates are stable when actually they move dramatically. In the euro zone of course everything remains fixed between countries but costs and standards of living vary a lot, so it was interesting to see Slovakia as we did a couple of weeks ago, much poorer than France, Italy or Austria which we passed through to get there and just about to join the euro: people are worried that prices will go up when it happens next January, but the cost of everyday living there is dramatically cheaper than in western Europe. We think the UK should have joined the euro long ago - now it does not seem to be on the agenda in Britain which is maybe just as well if the current rates were the ones to be kept!
My friend wondered why American women decided to come and live in the Languedoc, and I guess often it is for the same reason we did, for sun and culture and so on, but I said flippantly that perhaps they married French vignerons (Kristin Espinasse who runs the blog French Word a Day did just that, and I've written about the wine in the wine diary) and as I said this we met one such, the woman running the plant stall whose husband grows grapes for the local Cave Co-operative - we bought a vine from her! 20 April 2008 We have just returned from a 10-day holiday in Italy and Slovakia. This is a potted account with some photos of our journey.
Back home after 11-hour drive and 180+ tunnels to overcast skies (now sunny again) and wonderful irises, a complete surprise since they did not flower at all last year!
2 April 2008 Struggling out to write this from under an impossibly longstanding throat infection and the powerful medicines I now have to try and knock it on the head, I intend to make this brief, but to point to a couple of new photo albums which I hope will make up for any lack of words. On Easter Saturday we went to Saint Jean du Gard, north of here in the Cevennnes, to a festival called Boulegan a l'Ostal which celebrates all kinds of traditional and folk music. The main attraction for us as daytime visitors was the huge range of stalls of instrument makers, together with impromptu recitals by groups in the exhibition hall and in the streets nearby. We even met a splendid group of Morris dancers from Yorkshire. Photos here. Easter Monday was the day of a picnic with neighbours and friends at a cabane, a simple little house built amid the canals and marshes south of here and bordering the Etang d'Or, the huge lake which is one of a chain between us and the sea. You may recall the earlier gallery of the Cabanes on the Canal de Lunel which I added last year (see photo page for a link) and here are the photos I took this Easter, which will give you a better impression than many words can provide. Around the house and garden, apart from increasingly warm weather which enables us to eat outside at lunchtime (with 18 friends from our French class yesterday, bring and share thankfully!) the main event has been my building of the garden shed from a kit - not perfect, but good enough and surprisingly easier than I had feared. Finally, here are some irises in flower as I write, and also a picture of our newest art acquisition (about 40 cm high to give you an idea of scale) by a sculptress called Marie-Claire Esposito who lives in Sète.
Last Sunday we had the privilege and pleasure of hearing the Pro Musica choir of 50 young women from Hungary with their inspired conductor Dénes Szabó. I'll describe this in some detail because it was both unusual and outstanding as a musical experience. The concert was in the church in Roujan, north of Béziers - our friends Ann Roberts and Fran Steele live there in La Maison Verte where they run singing courses among others. Fran has known Dénes as a professional colleague for some time and so the choir asked to stay over on their way from Hungary to a concert tour in Spain. Late in the afternoon the coach arrived after 26 hours on the road, and a couple of hours later the choir sang despite their weariness - an hour of mostly religious music, mostly from Hungary (Kodaly, Bartok and others), not at all an easy programme but absolutely spellbinding and mostly sung from memory. Among the many impressive features were the tuning, co-ordination and sheer focus of the singers, and above all that they stood not in a tight group but in a wide arc and sometimes completely circling the church and the audience. So the sound came from all around and absorbed us completely. A wonderful experience and well worth the hour and a half of driving for us. The local elections came out much as we expected - the mayor had a bigger lead (60:40) after the second round than in the first, despite the combining of the left-wing lists into one headed by Muriel Goroneskoul, and despite the dubious support of the defeated National Front for the anti-mayoral list. There is more about the electoral system in the page about life in France. Leaves and blossom are bursting forth and we have drastically pruned our olive tree - I will take a photo later when a few more leaves have grown. Despite the cooling Mistral still, the sun in the middle of the day is hot and it's lovely sitting outside for lunch here (as we have again today) or in the hillside, olive tree-surrounded space by our friends' Mas near Fontanès where we went yesterday for our French class. The key, when the north wind blows, is to choose the sheltered south facing corner! 5 March 2008 Back in sunny Lunel, and as I start to write our builder M Montessano has just arrived to arrange for the refurbishment of our downstairs bathroom starting next week! On time as he was for the terrasse last August, and good news for the steady trickle of visitors who have begun to enquire about visits this summer - with luck we shall have a spanking new shower and bathroom to offer you! Also as I write the north wind - the Mistral - is roaring over the house. It generally lasts a day or two and brings with it the clearest skies and the brightest sunshine, but at this time of year in particular it is cold - under 10° just now by the terrace - though it will probably be pleasant in the midday sun there, sheltered as it is from the wind overhead. This morning I succeeded where we often miss out (things vanish from the shelves in hours), in buying something in one of the many supermarket brochures we get each week, in this case a long-sought garden shed (abri de jardin) at a good price to store all our tools and outside furniture at the bottom of the garden. It was a real eye-opener watching the men at LeClerc manoeuvring it from their fork lift truck into the back of our Berlingo - good choice of car confirmed again! Now I just need to make sure the shed does not blow away when I erect it! Apart from recovering from the stinking colds we brought back from the UK we are gradually settling back into our busy lives here, planning our trip through Italy to Slovakia in April, and waiting for the local elections in which we have the right to vote. But for what or whom? Lots of our friends who live in villages say this is not so much political as a question of choosing the people (whom maybe you know) who will get things done. In a town of this size there are 6 'lists' which at first sight don't correspond to parties - the current mayor of course, and 5 other 'lead candidates' each with his or her list of 34 others (a town of our size has a council of 35) who would make up their team. As far as I understand it, the first round on Saturday gives all 6 the chance to compete, then unless one gets enough votes to form the council the second round a week later includes all but the least popular lists, and some of the smallest can merge with larger ones if they agree. We went to our neighbours' to talk about the various options - left and right whether disguised or not - and came away a lot clearer, but in the end the current Mayor (with the support of some Front National members) will have a head start and the various factions to the left will have to combine to defeat him. The first round of voting will be on Sunday and we will have to see what happens next... Some tiny garrigue irises have appeared in our new bed - pictures below with another of Mary next to the tree in the school garden at Barnetby in memory of her Dad who was headmaster there - we visited it on our way through England last week.
I'm continuing to write a little as we travel to and around the UK. On Tuesday we arrived in Paignton after a wonderful sunny drive all the way up the western side of France, a lovely stay with our friends the Bushells (see B&B website) in Normandy. While we were there we visited Mont Saint Michel (see photo gallery) nearby, and then after a gentle crossing from Cherbourg to Poole we had another drive in hazy sunshine through Dorset to Devon, where we visited Ed, Charmaine and Isla, now a talkative 2½. On Friday we moved on to Derbyshire to stay with Sue and Taeke, Heather's other grandparents, and are spending plenty of time with Sam, Saskia and Heather who is already nearly one year old! While the weather has been greyer and colder than we had left in France, we have enjoyed warm welcomes and the marvellous company from our grand-daughters and their parents, and now we are in Derbyshire we are revisiting old haunts and friends - this evening we have a grand get-together with friends from Wirksworth and Notts in the Mistral, and tomorrow we shall be in Nottingham with Sam, Sas and Heather for the day. We leave in mid-week to return home, stopping to see Mary's mother before getting the overnight ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge. A few photos from our trip follow.
14 February St Valentine's day, and we have just enjoyed a romantic supper and tasted two bottles of Chambolle Musigny 2002 - well its' a bit soon and they were slightly restrained, but still worthy of a special occasion. We have begun to feel really at home here, busy with friends and with projects, the first enquiries coming in from visitors this summer (but lots of space still in case you are wondering) and another period of fine bright weather though still cold and often frosty at night. This is just a brief entry before we leave for England to see the family and at least some friends - we are crossing from Cherbourg to Poole and coming back from Hull to Zeebrugge, so our journey will be varied. Just one thing before I sign off until March - Trudy is fine. When I wrote last she was at the vets' with a blocked intestine. Happily the bones she guzzled were expelled in the end and within a few days she was back to normal - that is, we have to make sure she does not wolf more bones! A bientôt. 3 February 2008 The past few weeks have been both active and interesting, although not always free of anxiety. As I write we are awaiting news of Trudy the Norfolk terrier who is (at a cost!) in the vet's 'hospital' down the road having swallowed what looks on the x-ray like a bone that is blocking her intestine. If it can be induced to come out then she won't have to have an op, but it is a quiet and sobering time here at home without her. We shall hear more tomorrow morning. She is a natural scavenger and this time she bit off more than she could chew, so to speak. Music has been a very large part of our lives during January - even more so than usual. My singing lessons are going well, and a few weeks ago my teacher Christian invited all us pupils to come together for the morning (Mary acted as accompanist, with aplomb) and sing to one another. It was a good occasion with coffee and cakes to help us along, and we plan to repeat it in the summer. I am personally being stretched and tested a lot, both technically and in terms of repertoire - one of the pieces I am singing regularly now is Fenton's aria from Verdi's Falstaff. Apart from other regular musical commitments Mary and I also took part in the bi-monthly meeting in Anduze of the Association des Musiciens Amateurs again. This time we followed up the successful renaissance music playing day we held here last November and collected the same players together last Sunday morning to rehearse a set of Susato dances which we played to the assembled company that afternoon. We had 4 recorders and 4 string players, and although it was a bit ragged at the edges I think we made a good shot at it after only a short rehearsal. To begin with we found the hour's drive north to Anduze a bit daunting, but we are getting used to trips into the Cevennes and the scenery is so wonderful in (mostly) bright winter sunshine that it seems a really good day out. But we have also had 2 exciting musical extras in the past month - first, a guided tour arranged by the Montpellier Tourist Office looking at the tradition of stringed instrument making in the City. We began with a background talk in a little 18th century rehearsal theatre behind the main auditorium of the Opera House, and then walked through the city centre in the twilight to visit two luthiers or violin makers, both of them interesting and clearly gifted young men who have been working there since the late 1990s and re-establishing the old reputation of Montpellier as a centre of instrument making. Then, also last weekend we went to a concert in a tiny village theatre in Marsillargues, which is the next settlement east of Lunel, where a singer called Kamala Stroup-Rocher (soprano, originally American, lives in Montpellier) and lutenist Roger Glanville-Hicks (originally Australian, lives in Nîmes) gave an excellent evening of songs by Dowland, Danyel and other 16th/17th century lute songs, mainly English but with a few French ones at the end. He is obviously experienced and was very good; she has been singing professionally here for a few years but this was her first attempt at this repertoire and she did very well. We talked to them afterwards and hope to keep in touch for various reasons. It is great to meet more people locally who are interested in the kind of music we have spent many years enjoying and performing. In
a quiet beginning to this
new year we have been catching up with our correspondence and reflecting
on our first year in France. We have
been overwhelmed by the cards and messages of greeting from our friends
in the UK and elsewhere (please accept our greetings now if we have
overlooked you in personal contacts), and now we are looking forward to
another interesting year. Last
Friday we were out at the town's annual showcase meeting, a big
gathering at a local sports hall where the Council and Mayor highlight
major achievements and projects. There
were over 400 people there I think - it is difficult to imagine such a
turnout for a local council meeting in England, all ages, and queues to
get in! Actually the content was rather bland, perhaps even more so
than usual (this was our second, and last year the Mayor set out some
plans for the year to come) because there are local elections in March
so the ruling party cannot be seen to campaign.
We are registered to vote now so we shall be involved in the campaigns
as they warm up in the coming weeks. But it was good to be
reminded of the variety of services and facilities that make up this
very active town - we use most of them regularly or at least from time
to time. After
a grey damp week with some strong southerly winds we have had a calm
weekend of bright sun, and I cycled across some of the flat countryside
east of Lunel this morning. It
is ideal countryside for gentle rides when the wind is not too strong,
and the vineyards and fields are criss-crossed with old tracks, while in
the outskirts of the town old roadways still link different residential
areas now cut off by tortuous diversions if you're in a car.
It was lovely and peaceful riding around before lunch. The
choir I joined before Christmas is getting going again with a mixed
repertoire of different periods, and of more popular and classical
pieces, sacred and secular. So
it was a great pleasure to rediscover, languishing in the roof, 2 boxes
of mainly choral music which we had forgotten to unpack.
I have invited David, the conductor, over to browse through them
later this week. While this diary entry is comparatively short, I've written more in other sections on the food at Christmas and Epiphany, and on life in France as I see it one year on. 1 January 2008 - Happy New Year to you all As I write we are nearing the end of a busy and enjoyable holiday period which began when our friends Judith and Francis Roads arrived in Congénies to spend Christmas in the Maison Quaker. Judith is an oboist and Francis a musician of many talents including a deep interest in West Gallery church music - he has a good website where you can find out more about them, and the music. We went over to play music with them, reminded ourselves all too quickly how much lip muscle you need to play crumhorns! But we also played recorders, and Judith and I tried some of the Blake Songs for voice and oboe, a real treat. On the Sunday before Christmas there was a shared lunch after Meeting and then we 4 did a little concert of some of the music we had practised on Friday, and then got the others joining in to sing some West Gallery carols.
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