L'Été 2018

13 September 2018

The summer heat in France was a welcome relief from the capriciousness of the Sydney winter. It was also relentless and enervating.

Ma petite roulotte :)

Channelling Rod Stewart

Les Pyrénées in the distance

New lippie

Ostabat

Skaapies

Well-deserved pression at St Jean Pied-de-Port

After a week of solo hiking - ma troisième partie du Chemin de St Jacques de Compostelle from Arzacq-Arraziguez to St Jean Pied-de-Port, I made my way (think bus train train train taxi) to La Fromagerie, and arrived for the first time ever on my own.

Normally, G and I slow down to a crawl as we approach the barn, peering expectantly through the car windshield, anxious for that first-glimpse-of-the-year. It's a delicious slow-mo moment, when all that we have remembered merges with all that we have forgotten from our last visit and then spins rapidly to accommodate the changes we could not have anticipated. It's heady, it's exciting, and it's a shared pleasure.

Not so much, on your own.

As the taxi disappeared up the road, I fumbled with the key safe (what was the code again?) until it relinquished a bunch of keys all at once familiar and alien. After a couple of futile attempts with the wrong key, I could at last swing back the big barn doors, open the front door, and heave my backpack over the threshold into the cool, silent interior.

Hmm.

Still in my hiking gear, I spent the next several hours like a boot-clad whirling dervish, brushing down daddy-long-legs and their cobwebs, damp-dusting every horizontal surface, opening up the windows and doors and making it feel like mine - like home - again. Making the bed with lovely fresh linen helped too. As did the long evening, the sunshine still streaking in over the buttery polished floors until long after dinner time.

Not that I had dinner, exactly. By the time I realised that I was famished, it was after 10pm and my baguette-on-the-train lunch was a distant memory. The fridge was empty (though chilling the fresh air inside nicely) and a motley selection of spices and ancient grains (not the cool kind, you understand) in a kitchen cupboard do not a meal make.

Foraging in my backpack turned up a quarter packet of instant soup powder - a luxury version, the label boasting Real vermicelli! :) - and a nub of yesterday's bread. Perfect. Perfectly monastic, that is.

The glycine has grown!

Hydrangea blue

Early morning mist

Over the next week, I developed a pleasant daily routine. Up early, tea in bed while gazing out over the valley. Breakfast - fruit, yoghurt, toast - on the porch. My days were spent working - gardening (clearing and weeding around the perimeter plants, lifting their skirts to allow the grass to be trimmed more readily by John, pruning back the vine, training the glycine up the oak porch supports); painting volets, spring cleaning the barn and dépendance; reading; lurking in the hammock (though not much of that); listening to loud music (lots of that); and walking (lovely, long walks). Lunch - cheese, bread, fruit - in the shade of the porch and a short siesta before more gardening until the heat forced a halt. A hot shower to sluice away the day's toil, followed by a cold beer and dinner in the late evening sunshine. Riley would approve.

A violent storm (locals referred to une tempête) had blown through the region the night before my arrival, tearing tiles off roofs, disrupting power lines and felling mature trees in its path. La Fromagerie was lucky - we suffered no roof damage and no interruption in power either - but the middle pommier was decapitated about three metres above the ground, the entire, apple-laden crown thrown about 20 metres away, landing on a mature and loyal photinia shrub that didn't stand a chance.

The remains of the middle pommier

The crown some 20 metres away

When John came over one day to strim the garden, I spent a while raking up the apple windfall that would otherwise have sprayed apple juice in his face :) Then I set about tackling the small branches of the displaced crown, cutting and stacking them for loading onto the trailer, while John used his chainsaw to bzount the larger boughs. It was only about 37 degrees in the shade that day, and it was exhausting work (we were both purple in the face by the end), but it was a huge relief to get the storm damage finally tidied away, and to finally be able to assess the collateral damage (see photinia obituary above).

All neatly cut and stacked

The Renault started first time, much to my delight, and together we trundled up and down the road between the Carrefour and home every other day. Beyond that, I had no need to drive anywhere - I was totally content to live the simple life. Opening the boot one morning, I disturbed a wasp's nest and was stung on the ear for my impropriety; washing the car in readiness for G's arrival, I found another, this time under the bonnet. Clearly it was necessary to assert ownership over the car.

G arrived in Brive to blistering heat and no car aircon. This was quickly remedied by the garage, but then began a cat-and-mouse game of 'start-no start', which persisted the entire holiday, with more and more elaborate (and expensive) solutions being suggested as time went on. Essentially, the immobiliser was being overprotective. Insert eye-roll emoticon. Suffice it to say that G and I had several opportunities to walk home from the garage, having cajoled the car there, only for the problem to disappear when the mechanic took a look under the bonnet or turned the key in the ignition.

Much as we love her, the Renault is a bit like the little girl in Longfellow's poem:

            When she was good,

            She was very good indeed,

           But when she was bad she was horrid.

The days unfurled over the next month to the insistent thrum of the heatwave. Nights brought no cool relief, but the clarity of the sky was a joy: the sweep of a million stars overhead; Saturn, Venus and Jupiter our nocturnal visitors; and even front-row seats at the lunar eclipse.

For the first time, our customary quiet days at La Fromagerie were punctuated by lots of social events. We made new friends (Fred and Isa, Pam and Neil, Brigitte, Baptiste and Anne-Lise, Hans and Suzanne) and reconnected with old (Brian and Wendy, Joan and Boris, Bernadette and Alain, Stéphane and Sabrina);  we saw family (Richard and Rosemary as well as Pam, Jo and Kate); we met and bought eggs from a near neighbour (Dominique); we visited the markets (Sunday and twilight); explored local sleepy villages; witnessed World Cup frenzy in cordoned-off Juillac; and we joined the Juillac short tennis club (Angela, Bernard, Jean, Jackie, Guy, Jo, Chantal). We enjoyed desultory conversation with J-M and had plenty of opportunity for ever-so-slightly more pointed conversation with his brother Y, the local Renault whisperer.

A rare sighting of the slothful G

World Cup fever à la Juillac

Sloth contagion

The Little Prince statue in Lyon

The Weight of Oneself (Lyon)

If we creep up silently, we may witness...

...shed repairs underway

St Cyr la Roche

St Cyr la Roche

St Cyr la Roche, patron saint of thighs of steel

The rosier gets two friends - two hortensia

A jasmine and lavender experiment

Sitting in the stream at nearby Le Moulin Bleu 

Replacements for the photinia (gone but not forgotten)

Brive in holiday mode

Brive again

We replaced plants damaged by tempest and frost, did minor repairs to the shed and fence, lurked like lizards in the afternoon heat, and got going again with who knows what all when the temperatures would allow. We spent two nights in Lyon, reconnecting with la vieux ville and connecting with a colleague of G's, and at the end of the month, we spend two nights in Paris before heading for home.

It was a holiday packed to the rafters with memory-making experiences as well as the private, quiet delights of doing nothing much at all - the sort of delights that Winnie the Pooh understood :

I'm busy, busy, busy doing nothing Doing nothing, that's the life for me For when I'm doing nothing, I'm busy doing something Something that suits me to a tee Because I'm busy, busy doing nothing I find I never find the time to rest Being busy doing nothing, I'm busy doing something Doing nothing is the something I do best.
(lyrics by Sherman)

It was also the summer of hearing about health scares - involving a close friend, an old school friend, new friend, and a neighbour - and of being reminded that life is precious, and over all too soon.