Alors. Le weekend en France

 Bonjour.

The market in Ruffec. Honey. Mushrooms. Figs. Tiny strawberries. Celeriac.

My relationship with France began when the family would drive up and down it's autoroutes on our way to and from our tiny flat in Catalonia. We wouldn't always stay on the autoroutes, where France was just a series of green signs and toll booths. We would also drive the scenic route with three children in the back of the Mark 2 Jaguar, to little towns and villages where my father had found a hotel in his Michelin Guide that had one bed ( for luxury of bedrooms) and four knives and forks ( for luxury of the restaurant). My memories of France were
 1. Chasing a Citroen in our Jaguar, with all of us screaming at my father to slow down and him laughing at our inability to know when a game was a game.
2. waiting for days in a small town somewhere near Dijon, when the alternator had died in the Jaguar, and we had to wait for parts from Dagenham or wherever. And the french mechanics would wander around in their overalls saying ( in french) that Citroens were better cars.
3. Eating baguette and cheese with apple juice in a stolen part of a vineyard as we stopped for lunch on a July day.
4. My father, a man with a temper, throwing the Cine Camera over the stone wall into the ravine at Rocamadour.
5. Having this lunch in Corbieres. eating an omelette aux fines herbes. And a simple green salad.


Then my relationship with the house called Val Honoux in a tiny village in Normandy, close to Lisieux. Closer to Camembert.
Surrounded by cows and apple trees.
In the place where the imprint of the second world war was so strong.
Where I played table tennis and pumped the harmonium. Where we cooked with cream and calvados. Sat in the twilight and watched the bats slip out of crevices in the house and out into the evening air.







This last weekend I went to an area called Charentes. I flew into Poitiers...( there was a knife and fork stopover in my distant past ). Lovely friends of mine, who I haven't seen for oh-so-long, have bought a barn down there. She speaks french, he has a couple of words and a lot of charm. Another friend came on her way to places further south. Once we were in this TV series about the fashion industry.
Now, there were grown children and academic degrees and different careers.
There was gossip and breakfast and stories and lunch and laughter and supper. we walked around the roads through farms. We picked vegetables from the garden and ate apples from the trees.
It was a golden time.

the "barn"

early morning

late evening

No one makes french bread like the French.

Or french dressing.
Or a vegetable soup.
And they don't have cows anywhere else like the french. who lick your  hand with their big pink tongues.

C'est toujours un plaisir.
Merci.

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