A day in the life...

Back from England and some lovely encounters with friends around Yorkshire, we now have a few weeks' calm.  Evie the Norwich Terrier is in reasonable health though her heart still needs care after a pulmonary oedema and she is now on diuretics as well as heart medication for life.  But the sun is shining in the Languedoc so this is a moment to sketch our 'average week' here in Lunel.  The pictures are of our garden in springtime - numerous signs of lovely warm and colourful days to come.

It is often hard to tell weekends from weekdays, but we always know when the week begins because Mary is off playing music on Monday mornings (cello lesson then chamber music group, at the music school in Vauvert) then after a quick trip home for lunch she is back there for a cello group before returning to Lunel for qigong, in an adult class near the station.

Our evenings are often spent watching telly, starting with a date with Pointless each weekday.  It is kind of addictive, and we usually stay switched on to the national and regional news.  French tv rarely attracts us but we try to seek out good programmes like the regular Les racines et les ailes which is a splendid geographical documentary focusing each week on an area of France, a river valley from source to sea or sometimes another nearby area of Europe.

 

We have weekly and annual tv favourites too - sport generally and Match of the day in particular  so we can agonise over the varying fortunes of our respective teams Arsenal (M) and Liverpool (me), though we enjoy good play and good goals wherever they are, but also cricket summaries (we don't pay for sport channels) if they are there and rugby union (especially internationals) and league (Mary's particular favourite).  But we also cling avidly to Masterchef the Professionals, and to BBC Young musician (now in full swing) when they come round every couple of years.  We are also avid watchers of crime series and films on DVD and of costume dramas live and on disc.  So the evenings pass, often with a log fire in winter.

Tuesday mornings have been our regular time to improve our French with our diverse conversation group, linked to the exchange network which has been our regular route into local activities since our arrival.  We (a mixed and growing group of English, American, other European and increasingly French people) get together at various people's houses for a couple of hours of conversation in groups (English for French people, French for the rest of us) before sharing an apréritif and lunch pout together from the contributions people bring.

Music occupies us regularly and often - apart from her Mondays, Mary has a Friday evening orchestra (all these usually mean driving 10 or 20 km) and she and I play baroque music together with a keyboard player and or other instrumentalists - sometimes friends, sometimes a professional 'teacher' who has a small music school near Montpellier and helps us to improve our style and performance.  I sing in 2 choirs, one a very good Bach group and the other a small anglophone group called Ochoeur which grew from a choir started in Lunel just after we arrived in 2006.  More on music in another post.

The house and garden keep us busy at times, though we are not great cleaners and sometimes react in horror to the huge spiders' webs which spring up when our backs are turned.  But the garden is quite big and needs keeping in check - I mow the 'lawn' (some grass, more weeds, overall effect OK when kept down) pretty regularly, wearing my bee suit when Mary has active been in a hive.  We are now waiting for the next colony to arrive in the next month or so.  Mary has an endless battle against weeds, and takes great pride in the irises.

 From Wednesdays to Fridays we are generally less occupied unless there are doctors' appointments or shopping trips to fit in.  We walk into town often, eat occasionally at one of several nice unpretentious restaurants in the centre - La Terrasse  is our favourite - and buy local produce at excellent shops there as well as in the Halles, the covered market open 6 mornings a week, and at the halal butchers nearby.  We have several wonderful bakers near the town centre, and also shop at supermarkets particularly the smaller of the 2 Intermarché stores which is on our side of town, and at Lidl.

Our neighbours are often around to chat or to share a coffee.  On a  day like today it feels good to be alive and look out over a peaceful spring garden with the sun shining.  Despite all the difficulties and pressures in the world, for our friends and further afield, it feels good to be alive.