How good it is to be back on dry land, in a manner of speaking. After the exigencies of England in early August, I’ve appreciated even more than usual the beauty and riches of the French countryside. Peace and quiet. Heck, until this weekend there was a blissful week-long hiatus when the house phone stopped ringing. Mother Mary, the Outlaw, dropped her mobile phone down the loo. Some cur must have dried it out for her with a bowlful of rice.
Talking of water closets, I’ve appreciated being on one level again, too. Yes, there’s a mezzanine level where we have our TV and I keep my LPs, CDs and cassettes and my ailing desktop computer, whose speed these days is the equivalent of a shuffling nonagenarian with a Zimmer frame, but we had the good sense to put the bedrooms on the ground floor when designing and building the house. For a fortnight in England, I was taking my life in my hands whenever I got up for the regular nocturnal pee. The stairs at the tiny Airbnb lodgings were so steep that the steps were those alternate duck’s feet, or whatever they call them. It’s much easier and safer at home.
August passed by without any prolongation of the severe heat that The Daughter experienced while she was looking after things during our absence. It rained a bit and now September has started where it may finish, with mornings so cold that I’ve had to put on long trousers, gloves and jumper in order to give Daphne her morning constitutional. You feel a little sorry for the holidaymakers, but hey… that’s all part of life’s rich tapestry. A propos of holidaymakers, the Parisian neighbours – beside and below – have gone back to the big city now. But not before we discovered that yer man next door (who shall remain anonymous to preserve his modesty) apparently likes to operate the barbeque in the nude. Perhaps to Madame’s excitement. We can’t make out whether she wanders around in the nip or whether she’s wearing a flesh-coloured bikini.
In any case, they were both suitably clad when they invited the three of us and Lawrence and Sophie from down below and Sylvie and Olivier on the far side of the putative nudists for their annual good-neighbour bash. We all brought along a bottle and a dish for a bit of à la bonne franquette (I believe that's how it’s spelled). And very nice it was, too. We’d all been a little dreading it, because these affairs can be rather awkward, but it passed off rather congenially. The Parisians talked about the recent Olympic Games in their city and about the wonders of the produce at this time of year. Sophie and I go to the same vegetable stall at Martel market and she was enthusing about how cheap it was compared to Paris. And how much better the quality.
Better certainly than our usual disappointing harvest from our own little bit of horticultural paradise. The apples were covered like the roses in black spot and really only fit for stewing. The bountiful crop of pears has refused to ripen, even in paper bags on the window sills. The three peach trees – one of which I have now pronounced dead – yielded (count ‘em) seven peaches. The Swiss chard was severely coppiced by passing deer, although now re-growing vigorously. The chilli peppers have done well, but aren’t very hot. We had two stripy aubergines, a few yellow courgettes and two enormous green ones that I unearthed from a canopy of protective leaves. Yes, they make good soup, but it makes more sense to pay a market stallholder for all the effort involved.
Since the Night of the Neighbours went so well, we decided to invite the fully clothed variety from down below for an evening soon after the sans culottes had gone back to the big city. We have more in common with them. Lawrence and I tend to like similar music and, bless him, we came bearing a three-record set of King Cole Trio sides for Capitol. His Swiss friend’s father-in-law had recently died and left behind a legacy of old vinyl from which he chose the gift for me. He’d filled his boots, so to speak, and doesn’t tend to go back as far in time as I do, so I was delighted and not a little touched. A splendid time was had by one and they have invited us back for their next visit south-west.
They, too, have gone now, as have the girls. They’ve left me for 10 days in Athens and on Hydra, the isle just off the Peloponnese where Leonard Cohen once lived in the hippie heyday. It’s a long-promised mother-and-child reunion to celebrate Our Kid’s imminent 30 years on earth and to give the Good Wife a well-earned rest. Hopefully not from her husband, I should add, but from the demands of her all-consuming mother. The human succubus. So I’m marking time at home until their return. I have a few commissions to use as an excuse for my own private stay-cation, but in truth I love my home and surroundings and enjoy being with the cats and dogs and able to follow my own rhythms.
There’s always tons to do, tons to read, tons to watch and tons to listen to. Feeling a little more French, a little more bi-national than I normally do, I’ve just finished two short novels by Colette: Chéri and The Last of Chéri, a Penguin bequeathed by my Francophile mother. I thought it was about time, since Colette is a bit of a local darling around these parts. During part of the war, she sheltered in her daughter’s lodgings – one of the twin châteaux of nearby Curemonte, another of les plus beaux villages of these parts. Her daughter, Colette de Jouvenel, while not nearly so well known as her mother, is actually a fascinating and admirable character: a journalist, feminist and active resistant, who sheltered the children of deported Jews (among others) in her (then) dilapidated château.
But back to her mother…The translator had and did a hell of a job: the writing is very descriptive, often poetic and flowery and sometimes hard to follow, but surprising in its candour. The books were published in the 1920s and, in an age of euphemisms and suggestion, they tackle subjects like bedrooms and nakedness and desire – sex in other words, and what’s more between a young man and a considerably older woman – with refreshing frankness. But then of course, France has always been another country altogether: something confirmed by re-watching Philip Kauffman’s Henry and June, based around a possibly fanciful triangular relationship between Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller and June Mansfield, his wife at the time of his sojourn in 1930s Paris. Steamy and ever so slightly daft, I decided that two viewings is quite enough, thank you.
Well, the upside of September is that there’s little probability of life-endangering heat now. The downside is the start of the hunting season. Just before the girls left me to my own devices, we had our customary evening constitutional en famille with Daphne. It was ruined by the spectacle of baying hounds chasing a terrified boar across the bottom of the neighbours’ field, which reminded me of all those American convict films involving fugitives from the law pursued by a ballistic pack of bloodhounds. One of those hideous Amerikanische pick-up trucks with a hood to contain said baying hounds within then passed us on the road. The Good Wife pleaded with me not to give them the finger. She was quite right. I’m not built for violent confrontation or even mild altercation. Certainly not here in this green and pleasant land where courgettes grow to the size of barrage balloons.
Just to return briefly to the subject of Colette in conclusion. On the phone the other day, The Brother offered me his theory of the four stages of a human being's life cycle: excited, bored, bored rigid, rigid. It describes Chéri's indolent life to a tee. No time for that here; I must be getting on...
