No Chateaux... no Culture...no Croissants - My France

Alone in the house, I had been able to rise early (midnight) to listen to the Test Match Special team commentate on the first day of the Test match against Pakistan in Dubai.
The dogs went out dutifully then returned to their beds, flicking the odd glance at me, huddled up in my old djellabah with a cup of tea and plate of Marmite toast alongside the computer.
Bliss.

And then England collapsed....wicket after wicket.....exciting stuff, but not the performance expected of the team rated first in Test cricket.

The light came up, and I went out onto the balcony for the part of the morning I like the best...when the sun rises over the mountain behind the house and hits Grifo Alto across the valley, making that great bluff a soft golden ball emerging from the shadowy woods below.

The solitude ended quickly. I had hardly done the watering and fed the chicks before the Man from ICE was at the door.
ICE - the electricity board - wanted to  reroute its lines along the road rather than crossing private property....fine with me....but needed my permission to cut back two branches of the huge higueron tree which stands guard over the water tank on my land.
Fine.
There was a consent form to sign, so he came in to the house and accepted a cool drink while we undertook the formalities....and I had to dig out my passport as I had forgotten my passport number.

English! He exclaimed.

I have learned by now not to complicate things by mentioning Scotland on first acquaintance so I agreed.

Big Ben! Houses of Parliament! Westminster Abbey! Trafalgar Square! Nelson!

The Man from ICE was a fan of London...big time. He wanted to go there, but...the money...

He departed and I decided to set up the lap top which I had bought in London.
I looked at it...it looked at me...and I decided to do something else.

The weeding was interrupted by American friends bringing their visitors over for a coffee....
The conversation came round to 'and how did you come to Costa Rica?' as it always does, but on hearing that I had previously lived in France, the jaws dropped, the eyes widened and out it all came!

Paris! The fashions! The croissants! Pavement cafes! Boules! Provence! The food! The wine! The culture!

Slapping down the temptation to say

All good reasons for leaving

Which would have been neither polite nor totally accurate I let them bubble on...but when the house was quiet again I started thinking about my own images of France.....if asked, what would mine be?

The true treasure was the time spent with friends...but that's universal. The sure knowledge that you'll be greeted with a smile is one of the best feelings in the world.

But as for France itself....

Driving back from the hospital in the late afternoons over the plains around Poitiers two sights would always lift me....

The first, lying back from the road, the tiny church of St.Martin at Noize, a place of worship long before St. Hilaire brought his brand of Christianity to the pagans of the area.

Closed for years because of its poor state of repair, locals got together to put it into some sort of order and it is now, once again, a place of worship.
It is a simple building dating back to the tenth and eleventh centuries, but has an atmosphere of stillness and peace sometimes lacking in more elaborate surroundings.

Then, soon after, the necropolis of Taize, the dolmens rising from the surrounding farmland....man has been here a long time which could be a comforting thought after hospital visiting.

And when feeling in the mood for a good time...nothing better than Le Trianon at Saumur...

with Monsieur Jacques in fine form...

and the fellow customers giving the only example I came across in France of the craic. Good times!

And the end of holiday river festival...le Rendez-vous de l'Erdre....the river running into the Loire at Nantes, lined with the mansions of of the merchants who had made their pile from the trade in tobacco and brandy.
This always gave a great day out....boats of all sizes and shapes, from rowing boats to a steam tug via gondolas and traditional working boats....jazz bands on the river and in every nook and cranny ashore...the muscadet flowing like the river and teenagers sniggering about 'voile et vapeur'.

Earlier in the year...and earlier in my years..I used to be invited to sail in what was then le Raid du Golfe...now much more elaborate and called  la Semaine du Golfe, up in the Morbihan....a video clip will give you a taste...

Although as far as boats are concerned, the thrill of my life was to be invited aboard a garbare at Nantes

although not La Montjeannaise shown above, and to sail down the estuary on a cold spring day which promised rain and squalls.....a promise duly fulfilled.
Hair plastered to my face, my jeans running dye over my shoes I was absolutely exhilarated as the squall filled that vast sail and a ton of wooden boat lifted her nose and planed!

Back on dry land I have good memories of the troglodyte village at Tourtenay....not least because when taking my mother on a tour of the landing sites where a Lysander would drop off and pick up British agents during the Occupation we heard an elderly man in the group comment to his mate
'She doesn't have bad legs for her age!'...

The current village stands on a limestone bluff which, since the third century has been used as a place of refuge. Part of it has been sold off as a 'police' training area, but in the part still accessible is a wonderful underground pigonnier...

I love the revolving ladder for checking the nests...and I miss the grandad in the cardigan who owned the vines on the land above.

But my most abiding memory is one which I have no photograph to illustrate....and it comes back to friendship.

Sitting under the cherry tree in Madeleine's garden with the others she'd invited to lunch, the tranny playing in the branches to deter the birds and a glass of Suze with ice cubes in hand - all talking politics!

Play has been abandoned at Edgbaston

Having spent the morning in the company of Jonathan Agnew and assorted Australians, the household is plunged into disorder by the news that play has been abandoned for the day and we all have to find something else to do.

Why cannot Agnew et al continue to talk? It is always interesting...you learn all sorts of things like Geoffrey Boycott describing his hotel in India as containing the 'corridor of uncertainty', and if, like me, you have been interested in cricket for years, you hear the background to things that puzzled you at the time...a time when the press was reticent, there was no Twitter and real men did not ride pedaloes. Test Match Special on the BBC is rightly an institution, though I do not agree with the widely held view that it is better when rain stops play and the commentators are driven back on their endless resources of gossip and reminiscence.

However, plans have to be changed....and so, if we are going out, will be the clothes. The ladies are already heading for the bathrooms, the hum of the hairdryer will soon be heard in the land and the men are thrashing out a plan of attack. It runs rather like this...
The ladies haven't hit the beer at lunchtime, so they will be driving.
That means they will want to go shopping or sightseeing.
How can the men contrive to avoid the former and make the latter tolerable?
There is a further factor......it is raining cats and dogs.

That factor knocks out the favourite solution, a run along the Loire and a visit to a chateau with a pleasant bar nearby where the men can continue hitting the beer while the ladies soak up the culture. No one wants to sit inside in a French bar.
We could stay at home and read, watch television and listen to music. We could, but by now the ladies have changed and done their hair, so we're going out.
What do you do to amuse your visitors on a wet day in rural France? They've bought their wine, so winetasting is out, the men revolt at the mere mention of Ikea, the Resistance museum is off the agenda as far as this party is concerned.....mention of the French army as the sunburned armpit brigade is sure to be made and someone at the museum will understand and we will be banned, historic buildings bring the men out in hives, so what are we to do?
The answer is a long drive, but well worth it and as the ladies are driving, they have the last word.



The chateau d'Oiron.





This is a chateau well off the beaten tourist track, south of the river Loire, built in one go in the sixteenth century so not a ragbag of styles, with a well preserved interior. However, the main point of interest, and the whole point of this visit, is the art collection. Well, yes, art, but not art as we know it.


The chateau is an outpost of the national museum services and houses a collection of modern interpretations of the 'cabinets of curiosities' which were apparently popular with the upper crust of the renaissance. There is one reproduction of the renaissance cabinet upstairs in one of the towers, but the rest are the works of modern artists, including one room resounding to the buzzing of myriad insects. How French. The video which I hope I have managed to download properly will show you more, including the set of crockery featuring the profiles of the local people which is used every summer to serve a lunch for the models...they find their place at the table by identifying their profile. What happens if your nose is broken or you lose your teeth in the interim is something I prefer not to consider.
There used to be an exhibit involving glasses of wine balanced without any visible means of support, but the room was closed this time. Probably knew who was coming. Still, there is plenty else to have the alarm bells sounding as our party tours the building...the sphere was inevitable and I should have known better than to have let the men get near it, but, wonder of wonders, this visit to a chateau is a success!

The ladies loved the architecture and the frescos, while for everyone the art provided a subject of commentary all the way home and well into the evening. Not all of it complimentary, but commentary none the less.


As we unloaded the cars, I noticed that one of the men had his portable radio in his hand. I eyed him and he said sheepishly

'Well, I know they said play was abandoned at Edgbaston...but I couldn't help hoping....'