...and the marble was released with pent-up energy, and the spring snapped uncoiled from its Covid, masked box, and I bounced like a grinning devil against the confines of my country (with one 'ping' across the Spanish border) and I landed on a little balcony in Figeac, south western France.
In front of me are tiled roofs, oak beams grey and wrinkled with age, strong as concrete, wonky stone and brick walls. Pigeons fly their ungainly flight, clouds of starlings whistle and warble, swallows swoop. This here is one of those areas where rain is welcome, not the kind of place where you spy yet another threatening shower and sigh and roll your eyes like it's another dad's joke.
Today, fat drops drenched the last hour of the market, the porcini from the forest, the slabs of cheese from the slopes of the Auvergne volcanoes, the mounds of melons from the river banks, the tomatoes coeur de boeuf from organic gardens. Thunder hums, grumbles, roars, lightning slashes the lead above and buckets of water chase away the stickiness. A breeze wafts, spiked with ozone. Soon, the sun will be back, the street fete will start and kids will be running and playing skittles, dogs will be milling about, tail wagging, mothers will be dancing with their babies to a Brazilian band, couples will jive, others will be smiling to a singer hand-cranking a street organ, 'oh la la la, c'est magnifique', Champagne will be tasted, crepes will be tossed and we will vote on the best jam.
So, I sit on the balcony of the small flat I rent in Figeac's medieval centre. I sip a kir and reflect on the last months since we all finally could walk further than one km radius around one's home. Were it not for lockdown and for the shocking realisation that it might be wise to have a base again, were it not for the Camino de Santiago and for falling in love with Figeac and the surrounding area, I wouldn't be here on this balcony, savouring my favourite poison. I would be in Indonesia, or in Australia, New Zealand. I would be considering ...erm...Mexico? I would enjoy my daughter's company in Hongkong. I would be pin-balling on a grand scale. I wouldn't be scared out of my nomadic soul. Damn... I wouldn't be discovering that growing roots again, physical roots, I mean, is much more time and energy consuming than wandering. I would have written this blog at leat a month ago. I wouldn't be letting the home-lover side of me surface back. Not so soon!!
This is when Brittany becomes like the Mediterranean, l'île Vierge, Morgat, Crozon, Postolonnec, when it rewards the patient souls that endured its bleak winters. Now, this is for sure the sort of sailing I could get used to.
In June, the month of my birthday, the first cherries were ripe. They hung from the tree like rubies in my parents' garden. We made jam, school was soon over, there was the anticipation of freedom from overcrowded classrooms and the drone of teachers. Last year, I was in Bali and it was steeped in the magic of this blessed island of volcanoes' summits lost in the haze, of altars and offerings, of incense wafting over rivers rushing in deep gorges, rainbows arcing in the waterfalls, of turquoise butterflies the size of my hand. This year, it has the magic of friendship, a three-fold celebration, the first, the joy of a meal out with Phil on the very day restaurants open again, the popping of a Champagne cork, oysters the essence of the sea.
The idea was to help Marie-Hélène in her organic market-gardening business. We share a meal in the convivial garden and I spend a morning weeding and planting in a warm drizzle. Their four daughters converge from all corners of France with husband and partner. The fizzy, the serene, the attentive and the quirky. The joy of togetherness is palpable.
I am treated with flowers on mother's day. On birthday number 2, not one but two cakes appear on the table and they forget one candle, hurrah! We sing songs accompanied by my new travel guitar, a present to myself. It has a beautiful sound for its size and can be dismantled to cabin-size, not that there is any realistic hope of continent-hopping anytime soon. In spite of the driving rain, it is sunny inside.
When I was little, I dearly wished to have a birthday to myself. I had to share it with my sister and she, with me. Born on the same day, a year apart, as different as two sisters can be and good friends, we often happened to offer each other the same presents for our special day. The year I gave her a swatch (I lived in Switzerland), she gave me a clock but the most memorable is the time when we sent each other through the post a video of the same River Dance show.
I jump on a train to visit my old friends Virgile and Lucinda, north of Paris, the first time in many years. We met, 41 years ago (gosh), in dramatic circumstances. My then boy-friend had been 'stopped' by the police during a demonstration. They badly beat him up and threw him into a police van. Virgile, an architecture student, had climbed after him to take his address. He had seen it all. He would be a witness. And a godsend he was as Pierrot, a sweet idealist soul who wouldn't swat a fly, was wrongly accused of hitting a cop and spent 3 months in preventive detention to be finally released. He never recovered his psychological balance after that. Lucinda is from Northern Ireland and her blond hair used to be so long it gave her headaches. I remember their flat was the only place with cheddar on the table, which she bought at M&S Opera. Within the alternative crowd I was hanging out with, they were the only friends I knew who were married. What a very bizarre thing to do, I thought then...
Today, there is Champagne, again, jokes, laughter and reminiscence, the glow of a good friendship.
But I am on a mission. Ping! An old stone country house is waiting to be found, in or near Figeac. Incurably optimistic, I am sure it will be the matter of a week (maybe two, in my more pessimistic moments) and that I will find much, much better than a ruin for my budget. Jacky catches me at his pilgrim hostel, closed because of the virus and, in case I had forgotten what it is like to be in France, there is a succession of convivial meals, barbecues, cheerful toasting of excellent wines from his cellar as friends come and go, as the sun vanishes behind a patchwork of fields in an opal sky, as insects buzz around the fairy lights and the lime tree releases its heady fragrance.
I shall not be distracted from my mission and I pinball, ping! ping! ping! ping! back and forth, accompanied by patient estate agents. The machine speeds up, the points add up, I will score big. The first time I walked through this area, I was enchanted. From this tower, Rapunzel let her hair down. Sleeping Beauty woke up behind those crenelated ramparts. This fireplace, of ox-roasting size, saw Cinderalla try on her missing shoe. Pointy tiled roofs top dovecotes. Castles, mansions, farms and manors sprout from alder, oak and ash woods, the sandstone the shade of spring honey. Rivers, lined with poplars, sing in valleys between cliffs peppered with caves, already inhabited millennia ago, where horses and mammoths gallop on the walls. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to feel this is a land of legends.
We stayed in touch and now, after 3 years, we are able to meet again, in the Lozere 'departement', over an hour north of Figeac, further from the madding crowd there is not, the most empty area in the whole of France. We cook, sing, swim in a forgotten river, at the foot of a rocky path through dense forest.
Our talks meander between the I Ching, astrology, philosophy, destiny, not unlike the passionate discussions I had in my 20s with friends in smoky cafés and tiny bedsits. They are a rare mixture : an open, non-judgemental, idealistic, intellectual lot with a strong practical sense in their hands. For the first time since I returned to France, I feel completely at home in my country. Yes, I can find here a community of spirit. They don't know it but they help me land back in my shoes.
But, there is no choice, distant destinations are not on the agenda these days and I continue what I now see as a reconnection with the community of friends, with life on the continent, 'in Europe' the English would say, to my ever renewed amusement.
I discover the efficiency of car-pooling. A driver takes me on the long road to Brittany for a pittance, all of the 750 kilometres from the Basque country. Ping! Phil and I leave the quiet waters, cafés and sunny alleyways of Loctudy, South Finistere, for the Glénan archipelago.
After 4 hours of sailing, we anchor off l'île Guériden, a vision in golden sand and turquoise sea topped by a tuft of hardy weeds clinging to a bed of granite. High water will almost completely cover it but right now, it is a Carribean-like heaven.
L'île Penfret offers a good shelter for the night, between the bird sanctuary and the 'teenager sanctuary', the reputed Glénan Sailing School. Throughout the evening, we are sandwiched between two cacophonies of similar intensity, shrieks, squawks and screeches on one side and French rap on the other. In the darkness of night, all is finally quiet. Just the light slapping of the chop against the hull and myriads of stars, the Milky Way in its full awesome splendour.
This will carry me through the ups and down of property hunting. I have secured a base in Figeac because, yes, I know two things now. First, it will take time. Second, a home is nothing without the community of friends.
The joy of togetherness, what makes us human, will not be denied. Ping!