She said

Lionel is hovering as I begin this. The deal was no hovering, no vetting. We’re only allowed one little veto each once the writing is done and we’re ready to post. But he’s hovering. So, I’m forced to type with one hand and swat him away with the other…which, actually, isn’t as unfortunate as it sounds because it has rescued me from the fat, blinking white man, and I have my first paragraph.

Ok. He’s going outside now, probably to fondle Polly. Damn, I’m good – here he comes with his little bucket and washcloth. Polly is the 1987 Peugeot we found advertised in the local paper. I never thought our first car would be almost as old as my sister, but hey, she’s a tough little thing… Well, we thought she was tough, but as it turns out, Polly is a little sick and her previous owner is a bit of a bastard. She passed out in Montpellier after the flamenco dance last Friday and we had to get her towed home, the expense of which made us a little sick too. But we found a healer for her: Yvan Jean-Jean, the friendly mechanic, who thinks I’m the bomb and that I should come swim in his pool.

We are in the South of France living a life of clichés – baguettes and bicycle baskets, rolling vines and sunflower heads, long sleepy mornings and market Saturdays. It is hot. It is slow.

We left Canada on June 9 to discover things and clear the cobwebs in the brain. A short stop-over in London brought us The Night of the Living Dead – two catatonic kids locked behind heavy hotel curtains, claiming back two months’ worth of stolen sleep and ordering Caesar Salads and Club Sandwiches just before dawn.

A flight to Friedrichshafen brought us a week in the south of Germany, the wedding of two of our most excellent friends, and some brilliant moments forever engraved. There were sunny days playing in the family garden, happy hours enjoying much-needed old friendships and developing shiny new ones. There were World Cup matches on a big screen in a barn, a “poor baby, uphill-both-ways 50km” bike ride to Austria for the boys, and afternoons of easy drinking and nail painting for the girls. There were serious discussions surrounding the value of “the nap”, a raucous sock fight, and the re-discovery of those underused, but so precious, laughing muscles buried deep in the abdomen.

A very long train journey up the centre of Germany then brought us three days of soulful food, lots of rest, great long walks and talks with loving relatives, and a spectacular naked afternoon at the thermal spa. And then, there was one last journey by train and plane, and we were ‘Almost Here’.

‘Almost Here’ was a B&B researched and reserved for us as a gift from three close-as-family friends. They wanted us to have a peaceful place to go when we landed, but they couldn’t possibly know the peace it would actually bring. Our room was named “7e Ciel” (Seventh Heaven), and the owner, Mme LeCorre, was being conservative when she called it that. It was a pure dream of a space overlooking a long valley of vineyards, with a little pool and an inner courtyard worthy of Voltaire. But more than that, staying at this place sparked a chain of fateful turns – through a waitress, an English couple, a Pizza Man, and a Vegetable Man – which all eventually led us, finally, ‘Here’.

‘Here’ is Aujargues, a puppet-size village about 25km outside of Montpellier, and it is where we live. You won’t find it on any map or in any guidebook, but you will find the slightly larger village of Sommières, which is 3km away.

‘Here’ is the converted cellar we have rented in an old, stone farmhouse owned and occupied by the delicate Fabienne, her silky husband Bruno, and their sparkly Gaia, age three. She is from Paris, he is from Grenoble. They met, fell in love, traveled to India, bought a crumbling farmhouse in the South of France, and resurrected it to fulfill their Arcadian dream. They turned the old cellar into an apartment, and had just finished and furnished it when we crossed their path.

Our front entrance is through the garden and our doorway is marked by two huge cellar doors that swing open on rod iron hinges. Our ceiling has exposed tree trunks for beams, a stone archway leading to the kitchen, and terracotta tiles throughout. There is an apricot tree in the yard and figs down the road. I’m growing rosemary and basil, and I’m working on sunflowers.

We have been discovering food and wine, most memorably through the ‘Festival de la Gastronomie’ in Aix-en-Provence. A chef friend from Canada tipped us off, so we headed there one Sunday afternoon and found yet another Seventh Heaven. You walk in, they give you a glass attached to a string, which you hang around your neck and re-fill at whim with all the wines of the region. They also give you a big round plate, which you hold onto for dear life as you wine-wobble down the aisles and fill it up with the food of all the best chefs. We drank wines from the Mas de Cadenet and Domaine Saint-Christol among others, and we ate “un feuilleté de riz de veau au roumarin”, “des supions à l’ail et persillade”, “un fromage à la chèvre avec un coulis de figues”, et “du sorbet à la lavande”. And (thanks Geoff) it was every bit as dreamy as it sounds.

Let’s see, what else have we been discovering…

Lionel has been discovering beer, wine and cider in the afternoon, and I’ve been discovering he thinks he was Mario Andretti in another life. Dude drives like a cowboy down these country roads, and sometimes Polly pulls me aside to tell me she’s scared. You see, we’ve bonded, her and I, because I’ve been learning to drive standard on her and she thinks I’m a natural. Lionel also has a new little shoulder dance inspired by the book he’s been reading on the Slow Movement, and last night at cocktail hour, he told me he’s already tired of the “French cheek-kissing thing.”

I’ve been discovering that I really don’t like roosters, and that Lionel is funniest in the morning. Under the apricot tree, we have a whole chicken family… Something about making fresh organic eggs, which normally I would applaud, but one day at 4am, that little f&*%cker is going to go down. Did you know roosters don’t announce the coming of dawn only once? Did you know they go ON and ON, randomly cooing whenever they flipping feel like it?? I’m telling you, I’ve never heard gentle Lionel swear like I did the second morning we were here – and to preserve his image, I won’t repeat it, but trust me, even I couldn’t have outdone him. He was swooshing and slamming his pillow, threatening to shove a stone down the rooster’s throat, and then blame it on the annoying cat that keeps sneaking into our place. His theory was that our happy hippy hosts upstairs would think the cat was evil and give him away, and that we would… “kill two birds…” – yeah, you got it. The guy had me in Seinfeld-degree stitches describing, with his serious, sleepy, blue eyes, how THIS was finally how he would prove to the world he was a genius.

I’ve been discovering that French mosquitoes are slutty and mean, and that I actually love the “French cheek-kissing thing.” The first time I felt I had really arrived was when Olivier, the local ‘fromager’ in the village, walked around his counter to greet me with his three kisses. I was tickled fuscia.

Nothing like being in bed with the cheese guy.

Bisou. Bisou. Bisou.
Nathalie

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 4:59 pm and is filed under She Said. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.