Saturday 14th April

We have been driving back all day yesterday and again today.  I quite like travelling and looking over the fields as we speed past, but France is such a vast country that even when one has been travelling at 85 miles per hour for a couple of hours and it is only a few inches on the map.

When one is travelling towards a destination, especially a new one, one is full of hope and ideas and above all else a pervading sense of excitement which naturally rises as one approaches closer.  The return journey, while still a part of the holiday, brings on strange feelings almost of regret at not achieving quite that which one set out to accomplish, mixed with emotions of parting, especially if one had a good time, and slight feelings of sadness at returning to one’s normal life again, with the daily grind, the pile of washing and the even more tiresome pile of letters to address.

Sometimes when one considers it in the cold light of day, a holiday is an enormous waste of time, but the opposite, having no holidays, leaves one feeling denied and almost a second-class citizen.  In any case I have had a good time.  I always feel comfortable in France, like a warm jumper one slips into every now and then, it may be a bit old and frumpy but it is so warm and cosy that one wonders why on earth one doesn’t wear it more often.

Friday 13th April

For this time of year the weather is so mixed.  It has really been unseasonably cold here in France.  I was here last year at Easter, (admittedly it fell a couple of weeks later) and it was beautiful.  And it is here too, when the sun comes out.  Unfortunately that has been sporadic to say the least.  We have had rain and overcast thick broiling dark clouds for most of the holiday with occasional outbursts of sunshine.  And when the sun comes out it is charming and pretty, but still not exactly warm.  The local residents we have spoken to say that the Winter was the worst in living memory, and Spring was a month late, so I suppose that that must be the reason, but it certainly feels more like early March than April.   And when it rains it really rains here, great deluges of driving hard little pellets which cut right through your clothing and chill you to the core.

Apparently it has been even worse for you in England, which gives some small comfort I am sorry to say.  If one goes away on holiday especially to somewhere which traditionally has better weather, one does hope to be served up slightly better rations than one gets at home.  The irony is that annoyingly whenever one mentions the inclement and cold weather to any of the locals they shake their heads and say, “Mais oui, c’est incroyable” and go on to explain that why, only two weeks ago it was twenty-five degrees and beautiful sunshine.

Thursday 12th April

We have spent a couple of days driving around the various Bastide towns of the Dordogne and they are beautiful.  Built in the thirteenth century by the English under Elaeanor of Aquitaine when we still controlled half of France, or in all reality by marriage and conquest by the Normans the royal families of the English kings of the time ruled half of France; for the poor peasants it probably made little difference who their local barons nominally paid allegiance to, they just had to survive and grow enough food to eat.   The towns were built around large squares with big arched porticoes and stone built houses with half timbered upper floors, reminiscent of our own Tudor  houses but much dustier and the timbers a light brown against a creamy yellow plaster rather than our familiar black and white.  The adjoining streets have mostly been preserved and are much sought after, but they are actually very small and pokey with no gardens and tiny windows so I am not sure I would want one.  The house or gite we are staying in is quite old and made of stone too, and the windows have been renewed but it is dark inside, and you have to have the lights on all day.

And in a funny way though when you first see them, the towns are delightful, as you see more and more by the fourth or fifth you are quite blasé about them.  A bit like paintings in an Art gallery, at first they take your breath away, but there comes a point when you are painting-ed out and just have to leave.  Maybe the human brain can only take in so much beauty, or maybe we are just fickle.  But there is no denying that the towns are really beautiful, but one a day would have been quite enough I think.

Wednesday 11th April

We stopped in Limoges on the way down, a really nice town.  In the morning I opened the windows, it was just getting light and was an hour earlier than England, I looked at my watch and it was seven-thirty.  Because we were further south the sun rises a bit later and a bit quicker, but I was amazed at the lack of people on the street.  Our hotel was on the main square where there were shops and banks and one would have thought people, but people there were hardly any; a couple of buses slowly pootling along, hardly any cars and almost no pedestrians.  I watched for an hour and even at eight-thirty there was hardly a soul out on this admittedly rainy morning.  It seems the French are not such early risers as we are in England.  Even on wintry mornings I am rarely on my own at seven and never if I go out at eight; here the pavements are bustling with early morning workers or dog walkers, all busily scurrying along.  In France it seems very little happens before nine, and then it takes until ten before most shops open     and the daily routine really gets going.   Given that most shops are notoriously closed too between twelve and two it makes you wonder how anything gets done.  But maybe they have the right idea, that work should be completed in a s short a time as possible before getting on with actual living.  In England I suspect that we have lost the idea of living, lots of us existing simply in order to work.

Tuesday 10th April

Admittedly it was Easter Sunday, but the market at Issigues was something else.  Despite the unseasonal weather, with rain clouds churning up the skies above us, everyone was in a festive mood.  And this was a real street market, winding all the way up the high street, and into the village square and down at least four or five other roads too. In fact wherever you went there were stalls selling everything you could imagine.  But not like the shoddy market stalls in England where plastic and cheap tools or packets of out of stock food are sold, or piles of stuff bought cheaply from wholesalers on the hope of a quick profit looking sad and neglected.  No, here everything was good quality, well presented, and genuinely interesting.  There were one or two selling clothes or hats, and a few jewelry stalls too, but most were food, and what glorious food too.  There were of course lots of fruit and vegetables, with asparagus, chard, endives, fennel, and huge bulbs of pink garlic, as well as the more standard items.  These were supplemented by charcuterie and sausages and foie gras and cured hams.  There was a huge variety of cheese; I bought one large piece of the most beautiful semi-hard cheese cut from a wheel, I was so excited that I forgot the name of it.

In the town square there was a feast being prepared.  An old grey-green mobile bakery, which looked pre-war was baking the bread, French women were busy stirring huge industrial sized steel tureens of soup and vegetables, a marquee was being laid with trestle tables and chairs for a banquet.  The piece de resistance was a huge open air barbecue.  A raised thirty foot long metal trough filled with massive burning logs over which were suspended about ten huge legs of pork, blackening and sizzling in the heat.  A man was constantly dousing them with water so they were kept moist.  What a sight, what a discovery, what an adventure, and all happening in a really quite small village in South-Western France.

Monday 9th April

This is another blog written before my departure, so I have no idea when, if ever you will receive this one.   Mr. Ed was a talking horse.  I had completely forgotten about it until I heard a song by David Bowie, one of his most recent I believe.  When Television was in its’ infancy there was a slew of American programmes, not only the detective/thrillers Hawaii 5 0, and 77 Sunset Strip, but a whole batch of comedies too.  ‘I love Lucy’ was everyone’s favourite, with its’ ditzy but glamorous star and her long suffering husband, but there was also the famous talking horse ‘Mr. Ed’, and a great love of mine ‘Green Acres’, about a city dweller who buys a farm in the country, and the mishaps that result, you can easily imagine Steve Martin playing this part nowadays.  Then a little later came ‘The Beverley Hill-Billies’ about a family of almost retards from the country who strike oil, black gold, on their land and suddenly become rich and move, lock stock and old trailer to Hollywood.  Another mid-sixties favourite was ‘Bewitched’ where a very young Larry Hagman marries a real life witch, who casts little spells on all and sundry.  They were all so inventive, and when you look at more recent American comedies such as ‘Friends’ and ‘Frasier’, which are all about relationships and angst and living in the modern world, they had an innocence about them that was truly wonderful.  I have never seen any of these comedy shows available on DVD, which may of course be a blessing, as I sometimes cringe at old re-runs of ‘Steptoe’ or ‘The Likely Lads’ on Dave.   Ah, happy days, when we could laugh innocently without looking for irony or cleverness or postmodernism.  So, consigned to the failing memories of such a one as I, we can wave goodbye to Mr. Ed forever.

Sunday 8th April

Just as a reserve I am writing this while still in England, so if you are reading this it will be because of poor or no internet access en France.   But it has caused me to look again at my Englishness, this central core of me, and why I feel so quintessentially English.   And yet it is almost impossible to put ones finger on what it is that makes us English; is it our diffidence, our wry sense of humour, our self-deprecation, the fact that we do not take ourselves too seriously, or as I suspect, that we know that we are actually blessed by living in the most wonderful country, so much so that we do not need to shout it from the highest hill, we do not even need to sing along to our national anthem – though we all know the words (to at least the chorus), it is more a quiet confidence that actually almost everyone else envies us.  Why else would we attract so many immigrants, not only economic but intellectual aspirants, who see Britain, (or really, as we all know, England) as a place to want to settle in and to bring their children up in.   And what a momentous decision that must be, when you look at all these brown and yellow face and begin to realise that for each of them, or their families at least, the decision was a momentous one.  I cannot begin to imagine the process of uprooting my home and possessions and going off to live in another country. Even when Edward and I had the house in Tuscany, it was always a holiday home, a place to escape to, and though we felt quite at home there, our real home always was and always will be England.

Saturday 7th April

Well Chartres was quite nice, though nothing spectacular, but even the smallest of French towns and cities seem to display far more civic pride than do the English.  Each town centre has a vast square or two, with grand names like Place de la Republique, and the streets are more often than not named after General’s from the two world wars or even the Napoleonic era.  And I think that it is the singular fact that the French had a Revolution, even if it was followed by a dictator who ended up crowning himself emporer which makes all the difference.  At one stroke the French dispensed with the idea, if not the actaulite of rulers, both divine and by birth.  The English of course had their Revolution too, but the king was soon re-instated and business continued as normal.  The idea of being a citizen rather than a subject is embedded in the French soul, and in many ways they are a communist country.  Not economically, though they are far more socialist than we are, but in how they treat everyone.  The ideas of Liberte, Fraternite and Egalite are woven into the constitution, and the well-being of each individual is seen as society’s goal, rather than the enrichment of certain individuals at the expense of others.

This becomes self-evident when you see how they elevate all of their municipal buildings; they love grand Mairies’ and Prefectures and Conseils and each town square is smart and well-looked after, small monuments to the idea of being a citizen; one may not have much as an individual, but as a citizen one has lots to proud of.  In England we are rather ashamed of our public buildings, and town centres are for shopping and commerce, not for ostentatious displays of civic pride.  A pity, I really like the French squares and statues and pride in their Gallic heritage; the British are rather ashamed of our once great empire I think.  So, in Chartres we have a grand square, with fountains and large public buildings.  In fact in France, in every town just follow the signs for Centreville to discover what is happening.

And today we drove almost due South for over four hours to Limoges, which is just half way down the country, but south of the Loire, and sunny and warm at last.

Friday 6th April

Up quite early (as usual) and down to Folkestone with my friend Julia, and the car loaded with dogs and enough luggage to keep us going for two months, and enough gadgets and little essentials to cover any and every possible contingency.  I do realise that they do actually have supermarche en France, and from my experience much better ones too, but as Julia explained – it is Easter, and France is a catholic country and everything closes on a Sunday, so don’t expect any shops or restaurants to be open on Goof Friday or Easter Monday.  We went by the shuttle, and I must say it felt quite strange, driving on to and through a train in your car.  We switched off the engine and relaxed and waited, and then the strangest sensation as you could feel a slight motion but the car was obviously stationary, only the slowly moving scenery gave away the fact that we were on our way.  In no time at all we were en-France, and driving down very fast very clean auto-routes, with lots of Aires on the way; sometimes these are full-blown motorway services, but more often than not just a very clean toilet and few picnic tables, a great convenience on a long trip, and one wonders why the idea hasn’t caught on back home. Money obviously, someone would have to pay for it.   Our first night is in the cathedral city of Chartres, we have just unpacked a few things in our hotel, and I am snatching a few minutes to write to you before we explore our temporary new home.

Thursday 5th April

I am heading off today for the Dordogne, and although I am taking my laptop with me I am not certain of internet access, so you may not be receiving blogs with the same regularity as you have come to expect for a few days.  Relief, relief, do I hear you shout?  And why not?  I have struggled dear reader to keep this blog going for about nine months, through good weather and bad, through colds and depression, through hectic busy days and bouts of lethargy too.  Many was the time I really had nothing to say, to you or to anyone, but a sense of duty, some vestige of the Victorian work ethic instilled in me all those years ago by Grandma forced me, even at eleven at night when my bed was crying out to me, to write you a few lines.  I will take my laptop with me, and will attempt to write something every day.  So bear with me, and though there may be some slight interruption, internet permitting you will get your daily dose of pessimism, sarcasm and prejudice, interspersed with a modicum of good sense, and maybe a hint of humour.

I am actually really looking forward to the holiday, I have felt so tired lately.  And this is a part of France I am quite unfamiliar with, with its’ Bastide towns and ancient history and the links with English kings in medieval times it should be quite interesting.  My first real holiday for about nine months too, so I think I deserve it.