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| To be, or not to be, that is the question. |
Our Shakespeare show, performed 'pour les voisins' went well enough. We could have had a bigger audience, but it is not every day that you will find Shakespeare performed in 'La France Profonde' in front of the Deputy Mayor who is a proper mayor, though naturally with no chain. There is no formality: everyone kisses everyone else. We drink rosé wine and eat smoked salmon sandwiches on the Mill lawn. Under the walnut trees again.
We did the St Crispin's Day speech from Henry V and also some bits from 'As You Like It' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' for which I had a fantastically painted face thanks to one of our friends here who is a face painter. Our French audience applauded dutifully. We provided translations. The Scottish play figured too.
We've been in the medieval town of Figeac today. It was Market day and we heard someone from a far-off country playing jazz on a piano in the Place Champollion. Then he switched to Bach. Prelude and Fugue number 1. Absolutely beautiful. We set ourselves to walk around the town, to snap the ancient buildings teetering over their alleyways, but tiring we sat down to lunch - for me a tough steak better suited to shoe leather. But the chips and salad were agreeable. Then over to our friends in Lessal, a forgotten hamlet nestling in a forgotten departement. They have a swimming pool but I didn't swim because the water was only 26 degrees. My delicate skin needs 30: not to feel cold. Instead we watched a Redstart feeding her chicks and drank china tea and contemplated why Buzzards ride the thermals. Their house is on top of a hill whereas the Mill is at the bottom of a valley - so it is hotter and more humid here.
There are wild boar around, we see their tracks and where they have dug for roots along the walking trails we have cut on past visits. But they make no noise and the place is silent apart from the eternal chuckling river and the birdsong and the drilling of the cicadas in the uncut hayfields.
Sadly the Mill is sold so we may never stay here again, indeed may not even see it again, so there will only be memories and photographs. It feels like a death. The trees will grow on without me. The tractor will rust. I drank a glass of Sancerre under the walnut trees this evening to say goodbye.
The others are watching Miss Marple on the television, but I am out here on the terrace, typing away. How quickly a week passes and we have done very little. Reading, a very little writing and learning lines, even less cooking. But still it has been relaxing but I could do perhaps with another week and then perhaps another. I asked our friends whether they didn't miss the madding crowd of social life back home and they looked out over the rolling hills and said 'no.'
We went to see a neighbour's house. A tiny house of two rooms and a kitchen - no bathroom. Unlocked. Tiny windows. The whole place black with smoke from the fire. The only concession to modernity an electric cooker shoved into the grand inglenook and a stainless steel sink in the galley kitchen But it must have looked much the same two hundred years ago, with the drain running out of the wall and into a clump of nettles. Dark, oppressive and dirty; a hanging shelf in the middle of the room to keep food out of reach of rats. Quite eerie - a regression to another age. Yet in the midst of plenty.
The old mayor brought us a bottle of walnut oil this morning. He said it was strong and it looked strong - a rich nutty brown, and yet it has hardly any taste apart from a slight mustiness, similar to that which still rises like a miasma from the old and disused walnut pressing chamber in the Mill here. That too is dark, black and gloomy. Like hell with the fire out. Most curious. We delivered to him last autumn three sacks of walnuts and he has given us back three sacks of crushed walnuts. Our task now is to separate the shells from the kernels. In the old days apparently the village would get together for this task and spend a day shelling walnuts and generally feasting and drinking. Then the shelled kernels would go for oil. I am an expert on this now.
It is still warm, but becoming too dark to write. The birds are still singing and a cock has just crowed somewhere in the gloaming. Neither have the cicadas found it time to go and clean their teeth. I expect the first bat will be along in a minute.
6 comments:
Feel I almost there in the dusk with you Fennie, with the thoughts and memories crowding in alongside the bats and cicadas.
If it is any consolation I'm sitting listening to the patter of rain on the garden room roof and the wood burner is glowing gently. Flaming June eh?
Fennie, like mountaineer, I think that your writing has taken me to a very particular place and time, one that I would not have otherwise known.
Thank you. I can now imagine some of the feelings that might be included when you do bid au revoir to the Mill. I hope that you might see the area again, even it the Mill might be in different hands.
xo
The Moulin is not yet finally sold - we have to wait for the purchaser to raise the money. I might yet win the lottery. Pigs might fly.
It is raining hard here now - Sunday morning - and Fennie and J leave this afternoon. Fennie has gone out into the domaine clad in waterproofs to take cuttings and to collect seeds so that he can grow little bits of the scene here and thus remind himself later of the good times we have had.
When the time comes I shall probably do the same.
What a beautiful post, but one tinged with sadness - mine - when I read that the Mill was sold so no more posts written there. The walnut oil presented to you will be a reminder of the temps perdu.
How sad - beautiful post though Fennie.
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