Part-time blogger - our year in a page

What a lazy blogger I am.  Too busy mowing the lawn (well, collection of green weeds...), reader of 2 daily newspapers (Le Monde and The Guardian) and generally being a layabout tv addict to write regularly.  But this is the moment.  I have done all I need before leaving for our music course on Saturday - all that is except packing. So now here is a digest of our annual cycle in France, and the résumé of the past 6 months.

Weather is supposed to be a preoccupation of the English but we find our French friends are if anything more concerned with it.  This year has been pretty terrible over western Europe (high pressure over the Azores apparently, blocking the arrival of warmer summer air here and diverting it to Moscow which seems unfair.  But we are gradually getting used to the push-pull of northerly winds, Mistral and/or Tramontane, sending clear skies and often cold in winter, switching with the warmer and wetter southerlies which usually bring rain though less in the coastal areas around Lunel than a bit further inland as you reach the Cevennes.  We do hope the warmth finally reaches us longer-term – in contrast to earlier years we have only had a few days still less weeks when it has been comfortable to sit out even at midday let alone in the evenings.  But the bench on our front porch gives us pleasure on sunny evenings when we can sit and watch the world and our neighbours go by. 

The cycle of plant life and with it delicious fruit and veg is more dependable – though spring has been delayed this year we always await with pleasure the irises in succession over the spring and a prolific pink rose bush by the washing line, then the arrival of the poppies in fields and roadside verges in May as the bare vines find their fresh green and bush out.  Then the philadelphus (mock orange) hedges scent the garden and the real orange and lemon blossom have this year added to the pleasure of stepping out onto the terrace.

The jasmine arch by our terrace follows with its burst of scent – Mary says that’s what sold her the house, while in June the riot of orange-red from the hedge of ornamental pomegranate begins, carpeting the bare space below with flowers over the summer.  The two citrus trees were given to us by our neighbours when we moved in and this is their first year of heavy blossom – until then the only fruit tree which remained free of disease (we had to cut down cherry and apricot early on) has been the persimmon, which really comes into its own later in the year as the leaves fall and leave ripening fruit like Christmas lights on the bare branches in December.  We don’t really like the fruit though we give it to friends who do, but the birds love it in the early winter.

We are so lucky to live in a fertile area with excellent small producers and so have not set out to grow our own produce, but the seasons are marked by the arrival of Seville oranges from Spain briefly in January (when the next batch of marmalade is laid down), local strawberries (several delicious varieties) and asparagus in the late spring, neighbours bring us cherries in May, there are salads most of the year and pumpkins and squashes in the autumn.  Ours is a big apple-growing area, and varieties like pink lady are ubiquitous – often we get given baskets-full by friends who have permission to forage in over-producing orchards, but we miss the greater variety in England.

Culturally, Lunel is much preoccupied by bulls and the bull culture of the Camargue.  The flat lands south of us are dotted with manades or bull farms where the black local bulls and white horses are reared for the spectacles of the course camarguaise and its associated rituals and colourful processions with women in Arlesienne costume and the cowboys on their white horses skilfully marshalling the bulls.  We often go to courses camarguaises in Lunel and in neighbouring towns and villages and marvel at the skills of the raseteurs and of the bulls who sometimes evade them – unlike the cruelties of the corrida, there is a champion bull as well as a champion human at the end of each season, and the greatest champion bulls are commemorated by statues (often on roundabouts).  The obsession with bulls and the bull ring in art exhibitions here pleases us much less, but I am still trying to get the perfect photo of bull and raseteur.  I have hundreds!

Our musical life is full of chamber music, choral singing and small group playing and singing.  The calendar can also be marked out by musical events, particularly in the summer when the national Fête de la Musique in June gives rise to a tide of local concerts and events – Mary is involved in 2 different ones this year – and there is an extraordinary variety of music festivals of very high quality.  The early music festival in the mediaeval coastal cathedral of Maguelone each year never fails to delight, and this month we’ve been to two concerts, one by Jordi Savall who plays there regularly.  A very high standard of music in a magical setting.  In July there is the huge Radio France music festival in Montpellier, with loads of free concerts – we’ve not been nearly enough to this in the past – then in August there is the Lunel jazz festival in the park, with smaller fringe concerts in the town centre (the French call a festival fringe ‘le off’), and in October we have the now highly reputed Mandolines de Lunel, where we are regular helpers and hosts to visiting musicians from around the world.  Towards Christmas we are with a small local choir importing our  typically English Lessons and Carols in the protestant temple at Vauvert.

Our involvement with local wine and winemakers is a constant and year-round passion – visits to vignerons come at intervals all the year round, and we have a monthly wine tasting circle with a dozen friends.  We often go to the summer evening tastings on the crowded esplanade in the centre of Montpellier, but this year we’ve added more formal gastronomic walks, one all day on a Sunday round Montpellier where courses of a meal in a chain of historic buildings were each accompanied by wines from the Grès de Montpellier appellation, a second by contrast an evening walk through the vines in Saint Christol, our most prominent wine village, with equally enticing food in various outdoor spots accompanied by a little band of musicians and by some local wines.  Saint Christol will be even more interesting as a wine village with the Viavino wine tourism centre which opens this month.

We could not do much of this without keeping up and improving our French, and without the network of French friends who help and encourage us.  Our weekly conversation groups are a highlight all the year round, and Mary reciprocates offering English conversation to several of our French friends.  All this is part of a network, the Réseau d’Echange Réciproque des Savoirs (RERS) – also a local manifestation of a national movement – which in turn demonstrates the richness of the tissu associatif as the French call the voluntary sector – much broader and better-founded in everyday life than the equivalent in the UK, although perhaps it’s best to say it is just different!