Mayday

 

The warm weather is here, and the taller irises have been celebrating the promise of summer.  We are struggling out from the remnants of Covid, though our choir is still in abeyance because our friend and conductor Kamala has been unwell, and various meetings are tentatively starting again.  Our Tuesday language groups (and a second Friday French session) have kept going, and with fewer restrictions and the possibility of meeting outside, numbers have been rising into the teens.  May began with a public holiday, the Fête du Travail, which is the only day of the year when supermarkets close (rather like Christmas Day used to be in the UK) which caught us out when we tried to catch up with shopping after a short trip away last week.  And the dry, sunny weather has continued, even when storms were forecast and we heard rumbles of thunder all around yesterday.

The tortoise has emerged from its hibernation, and the dogs are well - happy to be able to accompany us to our hotel near Arles.  We enjoyed visiting the city and also walking in the Camargue nature reserve to the south (dogs allowed on leads).  The Frank Gehry tower and associated pink sculpture were part of our walk round the town, remembering past brief trips over 20 years, but our favourite moments were by the river, which provides a broad backdrop to the ancient buildings.  Our hotel was just right, with a terrace opening onto the garden (where you see the dogs relaxing!), and the food and wine were superb.  We also made a detour in Bellegarde on the way home to rediscover the uncommon wine Clairette de Bellegarde - the clairette grape is more usually associated with the  sweet fizz from Die with which we were long familiar through twinning.

Our surroundings help us to keep a thread of optimism in these terrible times of war in Ukraine and public disgrace in the UK - how did public life become so careless of truth and principle?  We have been relieved that Macron saw off the far right challenge in the French elections, but the future is far from straightforward here.  The Russian assault on its neighbour is all too reminiscent of previous, intentional catastrophes in that region, and the chaotic politics elsewhere would often make one despair if it were not possible to look upward and outward to see the calm and beauty all around.   We just hope for a brighter summer and rejoice in our own good health, thinking of so many we know who suffer.