Summer Or Autumn?

Summer Or Autumn?

As happened last year for the first time in my memory, autumn seems to have arrived in mid-August. The days are still hot but below 35 degrees in the sun and the early mornings and evenings are cool, typically around 11-14 degrees. I find that very pleasant and, if the past is anything to go by, it should last into October. Winter as known in the UK doesn’t usually start here until December.

When my son Carl was here he immediately remarked that the blue of the sky here is a type of blue that he had never seen in the UK. It’s what I have been trying to capture on camera but it probably needs a better camera than mine. I’ve been trying to define the difference without much success but am coming to the conclusion that it is less a matter of shade (although the shade here seems to have more violet/purple in it than in the UK), than of depth: the blue in the sky, of whatever shade, seems to have much more depth than in the UK sky.

Last night I went to the mussels and chips evening in the square in front of the Bar du Pont. Despite the fact that there were far more visitors than locals, so fewer people I knew, it proved to be a lovely evening. There was music from a man from Faucon playing a guitar, dancing and, what I love most, people of all ages just having a great time. Just before I left the guitarist struck up with «Emmenez-moi», an Aznavour song that always makes my own heart sing.

«Emmenez-moi au bout de la terre, emmenez-moi au pays des merveils, il me semble que la misère, serait moins pénible au soleil». As a friend once remarked, «c’est joyeux».

I couldn’t ask for more.

The Garden

Because of the change in intensity of the weather, watering has become a less desperate activity, although it is still needed every other day. Many of my plants have been «fried» despite my attempts to keep them thriving and I’ve had to replace the plants in the hanging baskets and will have to look later on at what has survived in the back garden. However I have a bumper crop of grapes on my balcony. I never, in any musings on my future, imagined having a home where I could simply reach up from a seat on a balcony and grab a bunch of grapes but now I can.

The Environment As An Equaliser

Around where I live in France there have been a number of improvements to open spaces, cleaning them up, refurbishing or developing them, to the benefit of everyone, whatever their status, who lives there. These have all been projects paid for out of the public purse. Why would any individual, other than an altruistic benefactor, want to do that? And therein lies the rub.

Anyone very rich needn’t bother with such matters; they can simply move, as and when they please, to an environment that suits them. Most of the less wealthy may be able to move where they live a few times in their lives or take occasional breaks but wull live for years continuously in one place. The poor are stuck with what they have got. So improvements to the environment are a great equaliser, benefiting everyone, but they are dependent on a public purse to provide them. Anyone happy to disregard or trivialise the need for public services should take heed.