Midsummer Musings

Back Garden

A storm overnight two days ago and a subequent light breeze have brought blessed relief from the oppresive heat of the previous three weeks; temperatures are down by around 10 degrees and it is pleasant once again to be outdoors. A consequence is a lot more people out and about in the village. I hadn't seen Mana for weeks and assumed she'd gone off to visit friends she has in Greece, as she does most years ; but she turned up at boules yesterday and so I invited her to come and eat on Friday.

The heat fried some flowers I planted in the back garden to give some late season colour before they ever got established and that has prompted me to have a radical rethink of what I do there. It's looking very sad at the moment. I've decided that, despite the 500 litres of compost I've added to the soil, more is needed. Also, the wooden slats I've used to hold the soil in place are beginning to rot. So, I shall turn over the ground to extract more stones and build low walls with those to replace the slats. Even with the soil improved, I think that small bushes are the only answer as regards plants. I've bought a small hibiscus and hope it will stay a manageable size for a few years. Then I'll look for some patio roses, cistus or helianthemums to fill in, with perhaps some more lilies as they seem to do well. The back garden at this time of year seems to be a perennial problem but I still think I can find a solution.

Adjacent is a photo of the front of my house as it is at the moment.  There is in fact more colour there than meets the eye but alo too much green, due in no small part to the shadow cast across the front of the house by the lime trees on the opposite side of the road.  The large sunflower from a seed ropped by birds feeding on my balcony can just about be discerned at the level of the grapevine over the balcony.  But.........I need to do some more rethinking to, once again, get more colour at this time of the year.  Part of the problem is that three blue solanum in pots at the front which bloomed profusely last year have decided not to do so this year, perhap again because of the shade thrown by the lime trees.

Islam

Over lunch a few days ago, Steve, who is a history buff, and I got into conversation about the Moorish invasion of Spain. Steve pointed out that the Moors got as far north as Troyes in France but quickly dropped back again behind the Pyrenees and left little trace of their brief visit further north. In Spain, of course, their influence has been enormous and, I would argue, all of it beneficial. They not only left architecture of great beauty but also created a centre of scholarship in their great library at Cordoba and gave the world a lesson in tolerance. Islam became the official religion, of course, but christians were allowed to practice and were for the most part accepted as more or less equal citizens, although they could not hold office. By contrast, when El Cid and his cronies reconquered Spain, muslims were offered a stark choice: convert to christianity or die. It's almost the converse of what seems to be happening in the religious world today. And the christians effectively tried to ruin the beautiful mosque in Cordoba, a circular representation of the sun, by building a rectangular church in the middle. Someone once said that, if there was a God, religion was a cruel trick he played on humanity.

It's always puzzled me why the Spanish invaders are called Moors. The inference is that they came from Mauretania, which may have been partly true but can't have been the whole story. I met a number of Moors in my time in Senegal and they are a physically distinct race: jet black hair, jet black eyes, relatively pale skin and small in stature, contrasting hugely with the Taureg and very physically distinct from other arabs I have met. Those in Senegal at the time specialised in working with silver and ebony. The invading forces from north Africa may well have included Moors but must have included also many other arab types. So why are they always referred to as Moors? Perhaps scribes of the time knew no better.

PS
Formatting this post I've found again that accents do funny things to blog and website insertions.  The typesize changed after the tonic accent that I originally placed on the first "o" of Cordoba (the correct spelling).  I have deleted the accent but can't get the typesize to revert.  I've found in adding to my website on the village (www.mon-mollan-sur-ouveze.fr) that inclusion of an accent frequently causes the HTML round the following text to go crazy and generate spurious HTML which involves me in hours of extra work.  I can't be bothered to find a way to edit out the spurious HTML here. 

July

July

July is the festive month in Mollans and so our street party was followed by the 14th of July commemoration of the storming of the Bastille. There was a band in front of Bar du Pont but I didn't bother to go as I was eating with friends earlier and felt too lazy.

Hot on the heels of that the Tour de France went along the village by-pass. As I've mentioned before, the Tour is not really a spectator sport on the ground as it's all over in the 20 or so seconds it takes the cyclists to pass. However, it being so close to the village I didn't have to find a place to stand three hours beforehand so I went along. A lot of people had got in position in time for the « caravan », when sponsors pass by and thow freebies at the crowd, about 2 hours before the cyclists arrive. There appears to have been a somewhat unseemly scramble for free caps, newspapers and other trinkets which didn't interest me. Many then left the roadside to return when the cyclists were due. I got in position, about an hour before « the event » and decided I'd put on full regalia as there was the prospect of an English winner: Union Jack T-shirt and black bowler hat got an outing.

The week before, my daughter Natalie and her boyfriend Andy arrived for a few days. It was good to see them both in high spirits. Andy decided to attempt to cycle up Mont Ventoux but made it to only about half-way up before his legs gave out. It's not a challenge to be taken on lightly and he obviously lacked enough practice. Anyway, he didn't seem downhearted and, when he returned, I took him and Natalie on a short wine tour so they had a good selection of the local wines to take back to the UK with them. Waiting for the Tour, I bought an official goody bag from a passing Tour van and have sent it off to them in the post. It could be the inspiration for another attempt.

While doing our wine tour we stopped for lunch in the village of Gigondas, which I hadn't visited before although I've been to various vineyards in the area around. It's very small and the centre is occupied by restaurants and wine cellars. It made me wonder what it would be like in winter. We ate lunch with an inexpensive carafe of the restaurant's house wine. For a house wine, it was very good. I guess they don't make inferior wine in Gigondas; it wouldn't be worth anyone's while. But it might be worth my while looking for wine there that is just outside the officially classified area; there mighy be some bargains to be had.

The weather since the beginning of the month has been summer arriving with a vengeance: hot sunny days with temperatures from the high 20s into the 30s and with storms brewing up in the evenings every few days. I have twice invited people to eat thinking we could hear the fountain on the terrace tinkling in the background only for its sound to be drowned out by a downpour.

And the tourists are here in abundance, many of them posing in front of my house to take photos. I feel quite flattered by that, particularly one evening when I was nursing a calvados on my balcony and one shouted up: « Monsieur, votre maison est magnifique ».

French

It seem the French are officially softening their stance on the positioning of the language. Rather than trying, albeit forlornly, to insist it should be the major language in the world, the French have decided simply to accept that it is just one of many important languages. This change of stance coincides with a proposal from Academia that some courses at French universities should be taught in English. Horror of horrors! It hasn't stopped the inexorable incursion of English words into French. Friend Steve was recently amused to find a notice displayed above PCs in an electronics store exhorting customers to « boostez votre business »; at least « votre » was French. That gave me another couple of words to add to le chat (not a cat, pronounced as in English), le show, le talk, le best of, le test (and the verb tester), etc.

Early Summer

Le Feu de la St Jean

I think the summer proper has at last started. It certainly has officially as the Feu de la St Jean took place as planned on the 24th June. It being a Monday, Roberto was there with his van but offering mussels and chips rather than pizzas. The weather was good, if not as warm as usual, and there was entertainment of a sort, a Basque band that marched through the square rather than staying and playing in it. However, it was a quite enjoyable start to the summer and the weather has since stayed summery, with temperatures well into the 20s and beyond.

Street Party

Our annual street party took place on the first Sunday in July as usual and was once again a thoroughly enjoyable affair. This time I met four people I hadn't previously known and whom I hope may become friends in the future : a Dutch couple who have bought a house at the end of the road and a Franco-American couple who are in the process of a gradual move into a house 50 yards down from mine. They are from Dallas and, it seems, already readers of this blog; I didn't know my readership had got that far!

Stuck In A Rut

I keep thinking I must read more French fiction and keep reverting to re-reading books I have had for years. I asked Mana for some ideas for more recent fiction but the only ones she could come up with were a tranlation from the English and another that didn't appeal. Daniel could only suggest Michel Houellbecq and, in any case, I'm not sure his taste in fiction corresponds to mine. Houellbecq I have already read and like somewhat, although he tends to concentrate on some of the more perverse aspects of human nature.

One problem is that I have found it difficult to define my taste in fiction, since I have liked crime novels, political novels, science fiction and many other genres but don't like any genre as a whole in particular. What it comes down to, I think, is that I like novels that provide me with insights into human nature and the human experience; encapsulated in fact a single title, La Condition Humaine (Man's Estate is the English title) of Malraux. Hence my fixation on, apart from Malraux, Camus, Gide, Sartre, Giraudoux and the other existentialists. I had thought that this fixation was because those were the authors I read in my teens and early twenties when I was studying French but now think it may be more than that. The existentialists were, after all, preoccupied totally with ruminations on human experience. So maybe I'll just have to find some modern existentialists.

Garden Colour In July/August

This year I've had another go at producing a decent floral display at the back in July/August and failed miserably again, though in part due to snail damage to my dahlias. I didn't go for a snail carnage this spring and paid the price. But, having thought about the problem, I may give up. I've concluded that I'm fighting against nature and that's a battle I'm unlikely to win. Looking around, I can't see much colour that is not lavendar, oleanders, hollyhocks or hibiscus. Hollyhocks I have, also lavendar though not in such profusion that it stands out. I also have a small oleandar. The problem for me with oleandars and hibiscus is that they take up too much room in a small garden. And the problem with smaller plants is tha they generally do their blooming earlier. It makes natural sense: if you want the best conditions for blooming, water and sun, it makes natural sense here to do that in the April to June time-frame. In July/August, many plants get scorched and so die back. So maybe I'll just concede that nature knows best.