This title is a sure sign this is not a travel blog anymore. I don't know what it is yet, but stay with it. You tell me.
Well, distant horizons will have to be postponed. Hell, I can't even get out of Figeac! I just look at the sunset through the window and dream.
Starting a new life, taking the time to create connections, pushing shoots into the ground....Growing new roots it is. My flat becomes less zen, with the addition of a bed, a desk, a table, some kitchen utensils and a hammock that hangs from the beams in the middle of the living room. I find a mattress at the market, a 5 minutes walk away, which the seller carries for me up the 3 flights of stairs.
Idoia on my balcony
When Idoia visits at the beginning of August, we spend a couple of hours there, after the lively Saturday market. I plonk the table on the balcony, pour us an aperitive, fish out my guitar from its case and off we sing and laugh and drink. The neighbour from the 4th floor across the street pops her head out of the window like a jack in the box. "I wondered where the music was coming from ! Wonderful! There are many exceptional ladies on our street", she declares, enthused. We chat across the narrow gap. Cool and dark in the heat of summer, it is one cobbled alleyway that requires living on the upper floors if you want to see the sun.
On the day I wrote this, it's like I called her : she appeared at the window in the evening, the first time since that first encounter. Marieke has lived in Figeac for fifty years and doesn't have one bit of a Dutch accent.
For my old friend's much needed holiday, I have secured a caravan in a campground by the river in the valley of the Célé. There is no better place to spend the heatwave.
From our vantage point, we hear the shrieks of kiddies bobbing on their inflatables in the current, the yapping of excited dogs and the leisurely chats and laughter of adults. It is remarkable how quiet this busy campsite is. No loud radios, no shouty people, a good natured crowd, all of us under the spell of this little paradise.
One other days, we are dragged north into the heat by a pottery market in St Céré and a bucolic walk in chestnut and oak forests. This region in the south west of France used to be called the Quercy, from the latin Quercus which means oak. You understand why when you walk through. (Map below)
St Céré
Charlotte has moved with her friends to what will be their future commune, only a 30 minutes drive from Figeac. At le Perdigal, the land is vast with barns aplenty. The plan is for me to go and give a hand at times. So, here goes : I can manage the chickens. I am not a great success at milking the goats and I have as much authority on them as I did on teenage students during my thankfully brief stint in English state education.
I can make goat cheese and it is magical how quickly it works. This year is a good one for plums. Apples and pears are ripe a month early. There is an old dear of a dog who plays with the ginger cat. The doors of the chicken-coop are salvaged from a 2CV. Hills and mountains stretch far under the thundery skies. The bread oven is still in use. This here is the land of plenty.
My future home is a sturdy stone house and barn, with central heating, two bathrooms, attic rooms, a garden and an orchard of manageable size, in front of a twelfth century church with bells ringing every hour (I might live to regret this) and a twelfth century knight templar HQ. I joke this is very Indiana Jones and maybe I will find a treasure when I dig my vegetable patch. I still have no idea how old the house is. It has been well converted but I hear one of the walls in the cellar belonged to the Knight Templar commanderie. When I see the solicitor for the final signature a week before Xmas, he will reveal the history of the house, owner after owner after owner after owner.... A cherry tree is planted in front of the south facing terrasse and the huge, high ceilinged main room, with walls of clear stone, has a fireplace large enough to sit inside the hearth, like people used to. It has been a happy family home, the owner told me. There will be ghosts.
Phil, who has his finger on the pulse of the times, urges me to move our belongings from his studio in the UK, before the lockdown he foresees will last well into the spring and before Brexit turns moving across borders into a headache. Queues of trucks needing to produce custom papers, overworked border staff and an altogether Monty Python situation, which this rigmarole has been since the beginning, since that ill-fated and ill-informed vote. Let's not go there.
So, spurred by a sense of urgency and by the possibility of storing boxes, art, tools and furniture in the garage of my future home, I rent a small truck and bravely does Phil drive north. It is heart-breaking for him to close his studio, the Covid situation making it impossible for him to travel there on a regular basis. While he jams things tight in every nook and cranny, lockdown starts in France and, the truck loaded up to the gills, he lumbers his way back from the wilds of Essex to the high plateau of the Quercy. Fortunately, removals are still allowed. It is one exhausting feat and it will take him a week to recover.
The other day, I contributed to the preparation of 180 take-away paellas to help warding off the hideous head of bankruptcy. Not only is the restaurant surviving lockdown closures but it still manages to donate meals to the homeless. There are unsung heroes worth singing about.
When it opened! (Image la dépêche.fr)
Just as I was writing this, the phone rang. Samia. She needs my help. Thoughts cross walls and distance. Like with Marieke, lockdown it might be but it is not devoid of synchronicity.
In August, while I am driving around to fetch internet bargains for my flat, I give a ride to a hitch-hiker. Arthur is waiting in the rain with his guitar. Sometimes, he plays at the 'Arrosoir' (the watering can), an associative café in the centre of Figeac, which he urges me to attend. I discover a social hub. On weekend evenings, musicians and a cheerful aperitif drinking crowd congregate in its stunning fifteenth century courtyard. Flamenco and jazz bands pass around the hat for coins and banknotes, couples dance on the street as a balmy night, soft as silk, descends on the old stones. Volunteers organise free theatre, choir, language groups. I attend a monthly tarot session. It gathers, as I thought it would, a bunch of quirky, creative and intuitive nutcases, their minds reaching into mysterious realms. This does feel like home.
The courtyard at l'Arrosoir
On the rue Emile Zola, there is an association of potters where Serge, a patient soul with forty years of experience under his belt, revives my dormant and basic skills on the wheel. I am determined to throw my own bowls and plates for my new house. Oh the happiness of letting all thoughts drift away and be the earth that finally centres between my hands, magically.
Studio 36 (La dépêche.fr)
This is all now closed. Friends can't be visited, paths can't be walked. It feels like having barely started to soar and suddenly crashing onto a bleak and solitary landscape.
The 'soleilhos', the typical open air attics on top floors of town houses were stores for grain, chestnuts and walnuts. I live in such a converted attic. Walnuts were pressed to make lamp oil. I make vinaigrette with it.
A lot of damage occurred during the 100 years war, mostly in-between fighting years when mercenaries were idle and wreaked havoc out of sheer boredom and lack of funds. Behind these walls were the abbey's gardens. This house is where Champollion was born, the scholar who deciphered the hieroglyph. This square shelters a replica of the Rosetta stone by the American artist Joseph Kosuth, in honour of the bicentennial of Champollion's birth. Egyptian, Demotic and Greek.
Musée Champollion
The horses of Pech Merle (archaeology-travel.com)
On the camino again