Friends passing by

This summer has been notable for a stream of welcome visitors, friends and family, passing through for mostly short times - the shortest a couple of hours when Christine and Jean-Michel delivered wine (our last ever purchase from them, since they have retired and the domaine has passed on to others) on their way to their house in Spain.  I was glad Jean-Michel could see his artwork proudly in situ in our entrance hall.

    

Then we've just welcomed one of my longest-standing friends from the UK, Juliet, who combined seeing us with looking round the Camargue; and a flying visit from Alan and Clare, who live in the Diois but whom we knew in Wirksworth where Clare was a primary school head.  And our musical friends Stéphane and Chantal, whos hospitality in the Ain we so often enjoyed, passed by and stayed over on the way further south.  Now we are having a few days'break before our next friends arrive - Judi from Kentucky with godson Alex and his husband Jonathan, and their Amrican friends.  They'll stay a week or so in a gîte nearby and we plan to introduce them to nearby winemakers, sights and sites.

The never-ending sagas of refugees and asylum-seekers are as present here in France as they are in the UK, and actually a lot more serious.  We have recently started to update our reading of the Montalbano books by Andrea Camilleri (in excellent translation) and to rewatch some of the videos, and the arrival of refugees via Lampedusa is a recurring theme in the novels as it is in the news just now.  The coincidence of the Pope's visit to the south of France and his advocacy for migrants gave rise to lots of comment, but behind it,, as in the UK, is the hostility of the right (including British ministers who ought to have more empathy) to immigration and the appalling conditions human beings who have already suffered enormously are very distressing.

early 20th century map of our area

Sadly the spectre of Covid is rearing its head again - a good friend nearby has been diagnosed positive, and we have to take precautions, luckily at a pause in most of our activities, though I've had to miss a choir rehearsal today.

Even more trapped than asylum seekers