Postcard 1 from Marseillan. Arrivé

A dark challenging winter meant that  for me this  holiday has been the most welcome ever.

As the plane landed in Montpellier I knew I could finally breathe out.  S. drove us through the  yellow and ochre landscape of South West  France, wiping out the memory of the lush green lanes of Yorkshire as we drove from County Durham to the airport.

Well, we got here. Nous arrivons. My dear sister was worried that we might be caught up in the ‘football riots.’ No worries. Wrong place.

Of course - three of four of us being football fans - we settled down to watch some matches on TV – no talking heads, just football, a accompanied by the soothing sub-murmur of the French commentary. Even I enjoyed it.

This apartment overlooks the Etang de Thau, the huge lagoon that sits alongside the Mediterranean. People drift by on the road below our balcony  – sun-tanned sailing types, couples hand in hand, smooth haired teenagers, mature cyclists, a small boy on skates and a little girl on a tiny scooter.

At the next table in the market café yesterday was a cluster of brown whipcord-fit middle aged cyclists, laughing and preparing for their ride. Couples pass by – the men middle-aged, solid and fit, the women smart in pedal pushers and leather sandals.

Our favourite companion here is Barney, silent in the flush of conversation, wise in his silence. His  French is improving, although he hasn't managed to lose his aversion to French bulldogs. He can sense them round the corner, one floor down, before they bustle into sight.

The apartment is elegant, pale walls, pale furniture,  natural wood,  with vast windows looking out in the étang, overcast now with streaming clouds. Yachts of all sizes turn to make their way into the harbour. 

The company is first class - as well as Barney we have the witty gourmet  lickedspoon, the problem- solving techno wizard and the English gentleman. And me. All Francophiles.

I never felt more European. And I voted to stay in, to live on in history alongside the engaging, down-to-earth French

Au revoir

Wendy

PS And then there are the books we're reading, But that will take another postcard...

A Very Last Post-Card 8 from Marseillan: The Echoes Remain

My special time in Marseillan is over but echoes remain:

Dusk

Doves cooing loves old sweet song

Cicadas squarking their voiceless chorus

Small birds chirping all day tidings

Elegant, upstanding seagulls

Mourning their lost fish-feasts

Night

Foxes shriek their piercing warning

A scops owl cuts into  silent space

with its  sharp sonar sound  

Swifts quarter the wide sky, midnight blue,

soundless on the wing.

Later

Hedgehogs scuttle out from under

dry green hedges

Swifts quarter the wide sky space

in darting silence

The Scops Owl bleeps in the night
 like the solar signal on a submarine.

Postcard from Marseillan 7 Never Knowingly Under-basketted.

Laurence Phillips’ guidebook to Marseillan has a list of village markets in this region. Each village or small town has its day for its market. The markets are full of life from early morning until I pm when they are dismantled and melt into white vans to go on to the next market tomorrow.

     
 My co-travellers D. and S, who are great marketers, love to make  use of the ingredients from these cornucopian markets to cook the outstanding meals that appear on our holiday table.
       These two also love the flea-markets and brocantes– all the more exotic because we encounter fragments of other lives lived in another culture. Here are wineglasses that toasted the Liberation in 1945; here is linen from 60 year old bottom drawers and kitchenalia emerging from grand chateaux and rural farmhouses.

For me the ubiquitous shopping basket symbolises the market ethos at the core of this culture. D. has bought two (more!) large baskets to add to her large collection at home. She loves the things.  ‘Never been knowingly under-basketted,’ she says.One of these whopping new baskets, she declares, will be ideal as storing current writing projects in her study.

       

Life bubbles on around me as I sit in the lively café on the corner opposite the Hotel de Ville.

     Greetings in the market seem always to be enthusiastic and mannerly. There are the two elderly women who kiss each other on the cheeks three times, smiling and nodding: old friends.

Then there is the man who greets his friends around their café table. He shakes hands, greeting each one in turn, including a small boy of about eight who eagerly proffers his hand when it comes to his turn.

          And there is the elderly woman in a short skirt and wearing a pork-pie straw hat. She greets two men at one table, kissing both  of them once on each cheek. Then she pulls her purchase from her basket: a new hat: the exact facsimile of the one already on her head.

          There is the long queue at the horse butcher; the clothes stalls with pretty linen dresses and tops in bright colours; the stalls of colourful bags and shoes all tempting you to buy,

           These markets are a celebration of appetite, life, pretty things and beautiful objects. They reflect the villages which they dominate and delight for one day a week and are as much about the population of the surrounding landscape, as the travellers like us who pass through. We delight in them as much for the ways in which they reflect the unique region and the broader areas of France, as for the consumer's temptation and delight in the goods on display.

        All this makes for good memories as I take my French basket home to trundle around Asda or Sainsbury and bewail the diminution of the ancient market in my own small Northern town, its uniqueness swallowed up by the supermarkets sitting at its edge.