Flying dreams

Note: this is not my poem, sadly! It was written by a 12-year-old girl, Emma Kate Coleman, in New Zealand for a poetry competition. She sent it to me in an email, and I loved it so much I said I would publish it on my blogsite. Here's what Emma Kate wrote to me:

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"I did a piece of poetry that I made up while I was at the garden centre with dad! The competition theme was a picture of a boy and a girl on a flying book and we had to write or draw where they ended up. Here is my little piece of poetry:"

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Flying Dreams

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As the sun rose,

and the night fell,

we flew high through the chilling sky.

Brushing against a cherry tree,
we swooped low.

A pointed hat and a warty nose,

a witch choked on three cherry stones.

Sweeping by,

bubbles floated high.

A king cursed from his bath,

when we popped them and laughed.

Red riding hood skipped by,

spirits suddenly high.

Two pigs raced past,

the big bad wolf behind them running fast.

There was a joust below,

two knights with a lance.

Sleeping beauty woke from her trance.

The book led the way,
we could not steer.

The stories swirl through the landscape,

sending pages below,

filling hearts with misery and joy.

Home is near, stories on my pillow,

dreams for tomorrow.

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By the way, Emma Kate won the poetry competition - no surprise! Well done Emma Kate Coleman!!!

(picture image from http://www.poeticapublishing.com)

Food, fabulous French food...

Two days ago we bought truffle oil (olive oil from Provence infused with the aroma of truffles) from the Ecomusée de Truffe in Sorges. For our first taste of truffle oil at dinner time, we sprinkled a little over a mix of salt-and-peppered avocado, mozzarella cheese and tomato. Oh yum! Last night, we used it on tomato only, but the effect was still subtle and magnificent. I’ve heard people describe the flavour of truffles as ‘earthy’, and that’s the best I can do too. Coming down the wooden stairs of our gite the next morning I could still detect the soft truffle aroma like the best truffle pig or dog. It made me want salted truffle oil on grainy toast for breakfast. I resisted, and, thinking of mon transit as all good French people do, had All Bran instead.

Yep, ugly truffles

Being in this amazing food-rich area where regional loyalty towards its products is somewhat feverish, food just tastes different. It’s walnut harvesting time here, and we see these amazing sweeping/sucking machines gathering the nuts from under the lanes of stately trees, which results in the grass being soft, green and nicely combed after each sweeping. With the dappled autumn light coming through the slowly dropping leaves, it all looks amazing. I’ve grown up with walnuts being foisted upon me as cheap and readily sourced snack food (walnuts and Vegemite sandwiches for school lunches, for Pete’s sake). I tolerated them but that’s all, and mostly I didn't really even like them. But here, now, they taste fabulous. Our gite hosts gave us a basket of locally gathered walnuts on our arrival, and we all tucked into them with great pleasure. Since then, we’ve also bought a walnut apéritif, a walnut and cassis apéritif, a walnut oil for salads, and croquants aux noix du Périgord (crunchy sugary egg-y walnut-y biscuits).



We’ve now eaten meals with various local Dordogne ingredients, including: truffles, chestnuts (oh more yum!), foie gras (the kids for lunch), cèpe mushrooms, confit de canard, aiguillettes de canard (strips of tender duck breast – the kids for lunch again), and Bergerac red wine. We visited a gourmet food filled shop yesterday in Domme and were treated to tastes of different apéritifs, and those crunchy biscuits. The manager was large, accommodating and lovely, and I’d recommend a visit there (top of the main street, opposite the Office du Tourisme). The views from Domme would have been amazing, had it not been for the fog! After lunch and once the fog cleared, we also saw wild, side of the road apple trees, laden with sun/tree ripened fruit (so delicious if you are able to ignore the creatures that like apples too), and dozens of wild fig trees, that had obviously been laden in their earlier peak time. I want to live there!

Our friend from the Dordogne, Pascal, said he would walk 500 miles for the taste of some good cèpe mushrooms, and I agree. At a frightfully posh restaurant in Sorges I really enjoyed salmon with cèpe mushroom sauce, plus a side dish of broad beans, parsnips, chestnuts, artichokes, purple potato, and carrot. Delish. (How did they know that broad beans, parsnips, chestnuts and artichokes are some of my all-time-favourite foods?!) Lovely husband had a truffle omelette, which is apparently one of the best ways to ‘carry’ the truffle flavour. It was soft and melty.

Cèpe mushrooms

And as for chestnuts, I grew up gathering chestnuts with my sisters from our small-town neighbourhood, and they were the best treat on a cold winter’s night, heated in a beaten old lidded pan over our open fire in the living room, and, before they exploded, eaten quickly off spread-out newspaper. We would all end up with blackened and singed fingers but it was worth it. In France in the winter time you will often find street vendors roasting chestnuts, and the aroma is wonderful. You can buy un cornet de châtaignes (a twisted roll of paper filled with roasted chestnuts) from the vendor, and walk on your happy way munching them. I’m not sure there’s anything better; except, perhaps, if you’ve got a glass of vin chaud (hot red wine) in your hand too.

Oh yum, roasted chestnuts

And incidentally, Pascal-from-the-Dordogne’s-wife, Marie, had us to dinner at their house recently. I’m going to write more about that meal another time because the food was just soooo good, but for now a little aside to say that her duck and cèpe mushroom with pureed chestnut topping for the main course was simply heaven and very ‘Dordogne’. In my opinion she is quite seriously practically a multiple-starred chef, working at IKEA and living quietly in Muret. For the cheese course Marie had bought a nice selection, including brie with a layer of truffles. I absolutely love(d) it.

Truffle brie

This afternoon we visited the Maugein accordion factory in Tulle. My husband couldn’t contain his excitement. It was a real factory with real workers, fabricating everything on site and to unique specifications, and not in China! The tour was free, the sights were special. Nothing to eat there though but enough beautifully crafted squeeze-boxes to keep us happy for a lifetime.

© Sara Crompton Meade 2013

Sweeties, please?

It was the night of Halloween. We were staying in a tiny village near Terrasson, in the Dordogne, France. ‘Tiny’ meant a scattering of houses only, with one of them built in 1786 going by the date scratched above the front door. Halloween is not something I really care for as I didn’t grow up with the tradition, but my daughter loves the makeup and the dressing up so I agreed to take her around the small neighbourhood to scare the bejesus out of the neighbours. We interrupted four elderly folk from their dinnertime preps (closing the shutters, arranging furniture for the evening’s TV viewing, chopping the carrots, checking the chickens were back in their coup for the night, etc).

My beautiful ghoulish daughter

Couple no. 1 took it gamely in their stride when my daughter asked in her most polite French for des bonbons, s’il vous plait? They found a few wrapped sweets and we chatted for a while at the door as the temperatures quickly dropped with the setting sun. Madame was wearing one of those housecoats that you see a lot of old women in France wearing, as if they are endlessly tackling housework. Monsieur was very elderly, fine-looking and tall, but clearly shrinking.

We moved on to their elderly lady neighbour (no. 2) who maintains the most amazing vegetable/flower garden from her enormous four-storied home. I just love old people, and I love seeing the way they live and the treasures they choose to surround themselves with. This 79-year-old (she told us) lady lived alone as her husband had died some years ago, with her two grownup children now living as her neighbours and running four farming properties. She rattled a few jars (really) and presented my daughter with a pile of sweets that smelt suspiciously like mothballs, but that we later realised were cough lollies mixed in with the good stuff. Having been invited into her home, we also chatted a while, as I’ve found that you can’t just dash out the door to the next house when you are begging for bonbons. Eventually, she stepped outside with us, and then burst into tears.

Not expecting this, we stayed a little longer, offering the warmth and support of human company. I guessed that she was missing her husband and she explained that everyone else had died; she was all alone… Thankfully my French is now adequate enough to manage a few commiserating sounding words, and we talked about the village, her farm, her family, thanked her again. My ghoulish daughter wanted to give the old lady a hug but she said later that she didn't want to frighten her any more. After watching Madame finish checking on the chickens, we moved on to frighten our (no. 3) immediate gite-owning neighbours.

Madame was suitably horrified-but-delighted, and showered my daughter with all the treats in her cupboard that her own grandchildren usually help themselves to. We were again invited to come out of the cold and we chatted a while inside her beautiful, centuries-old stone and slate-tiled home. Madame kissed my daughter warmly on her ugly, blackened cheeks before we left, and she said how beautiful she looked, even so. She asked if we were visiting other houses in the tiny village, and I said that we would probably go home now because darkness had fallen fast. She agreed, saying that we were very prudent. (I love that word in French and they use it a lot.)

We got home, divvied up the loot with the boys (separating out the foul-smelling, probably past their due date cough lollies) and settled in for an evening of gorging. The kids, that is. I had a cup of camomile tea to calm myself down after the shock of making a lonely old lady cry.

p.s. I don’t usually try to change the world with these blog posts but for this one I just must say: Visit or hug an old person today!

Lascaux vs Lascaux II

What did I expect? I knew that the original Lascaux caves had been shut some years ago as the heat and carbon dioxide from all the clamouring tourists had been damaging the paintings. I felt really sad about that, and didn’t know until just recently that they had been meticulously recreating the interior and the paintings in an underground space on practically the same site. Great!

Staying in the Dordogne, and being 20 minutes’ drive from Lascaux, caused great excitement in our house. We have a children’s book that covers all of the regions in France and the highlights of each spot. Our eight year old son has practically memorised the book, which has in it an image of the fallen tree covering the entrance to the cave at the time of its discovery. The paintings are thought to be around 17,300 years old and are mostly images of large animals, which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time. In 1979, Lascaux was added as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so it’s pretty important.

Here’s an excerpt from a website worth reading more of www.savelascauxl.org, about the discovery of the cave:

In September 1940, four boys and a dog (called Robot) set out on an adventure in Dordogne. The boys - Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel and Simon Coencas – where intrigued by an old legend about a tunnel running under the Vézère River linking the old Castel of Montignac to the Manor of Lascaux. According to the legend, this tunnel would lead to a second tunnel and a treasure hidden deep in the woods of Montignac.

As they walked through the woods the little dog, Robot, ran ahead toward a deep depression in the ground covered with overgrowth and began sniffing the sunken hole. The depression had originally been created by an uprooted tree. The boys hurried to catch up with Robot. When they saw the deep hole, they immediately thought it might lead them to the legendary tunnel and the hidden treasure.

After trying to determine the depth of the hole by tossing rocks in the opening and listening for contact with the bottom, they decided to explore it. They enlarged the opening by removing a few stones around the edges with their penknives. Then, each one of the four boys slid through the hole in turn, along a semi-vertical shaft embedded with stalagmites down fifteen meters to a dark underground chamber. “The descent was terrifying,” recalled Jacques Marsal who was just fourteen years old at the time, the youngest of the four boys. Inside the chamber they used their oil lantern to look around shining it on the walls and ceiling.

Marsal remembers this first encounter describing what they saw as a “cavalcade of animals larger than life painted on the walls and ceiling of the cave; each animal seemed to be moving.” The ceiling was pure white, covered with calcite. And the paintings were brilliantly multicolored in reds, blacks, browns and ochres. The boys were standing in The Hall of the Bulls. Mesmerized by their findings, the boys ventured to the end of the cave. By then, the light from the oil lantern was fading and they realized they needed to return to the surface….

What a wonderful story!

In a slightly different version on Wikipedia, it says that the entrance to the Lascaux Cave was discovered by 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat, who returned to the scene with his three friends to investigate the cave further.
Lascaux II, is a replica of two of the cave halls (the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery) was opened in 1983, 200 metres from the original. Yesterday in the underground cavern entrance, our most handsome French guide with a dreamy documentary voice-over voice, took us on the Lascaux II adventure. Having already visited the wonders of Pech Merle in the Lot in the real, original breath-taking setting (http://www.pechmerle.com/english/introduction.html), we all found the Lascaux II experience to be (and I’m really sorry to say this…) a little underwhelming. The children all said afterwards that they preferred the paintings in the original caves because it felt like you were really ‘there’, seeing what the original artists saw. But for anyone who hasn’t seen original pre-historic paintings in original pre-historic caves, this is an exceptional experience.

The colours, the forms, the use of the natural dents and chips of the cave walls to create the shapes of the animals, the animals themselves, well, it’s all incredible. The paintings were recreated over several years to depict the original paintings. Apparently Pablo Picasso said (in awed humility) after visiting the original Lascaux:

“We [contemporary artists] have learned nothing."

So, onward and upward, we bought our fridge magnet, and wended our way through the Valley of Vézère passing a number of other UNESCO World Heritage prehistoric sites along the way. So much to see in the Dordogne. It’s really beautiful here and it’s no surprise that floods of Englishmen and women have made this part of France their home.

Mud, Toulouse sausage and me

"What was I thinking?" I kept asking myself, sometimes out loud.

Two or three months ago, my friend Marie and I decided to go for a walk. It was a walk around Lake St Ferreol, which was created some years ago (1667-1671) by Pierre Paul Riquet as an integral part of the Canal du Midi. Monsieur Riquet needed to provide a sufficient water reservoir to allow the locks on the Canal du Midi to function year round, even in the dry summer season. He was a very clever man.

Pierre-Paul Riquet, creator of the Canal du Midi

Anyway, the walk (in French called a randonnée) was 12km in distance. It was a highly organised affair, with tents, brightly-shirted organisers and marshalls, a super sound system, motivating loud music, a band later on, lunch (if you ordered it), and breakfast too if you got there on time (croissants and coffee). There were lots of runners too, mostly runners in fact, and they sped past, under and over us, none of them looking too happy I have to say. It was much more pleasant walking and chatting, well, until the torrential rain started...

But that was some weeks ago, and this weekend I had a 14km walk to look forward to, without Marie though who was going to a(nother) party.

"I'll be fine, " I thought. "I'll take my time and enjoy the walk. And 14km isn't that much further than 12km, and today it won't be raining! What luck!"

I arrived in Verfeil at 8.30am. Many, many people were already there (hundreds) and parking was way down the street and around the corner, meaning a good warm-up walk just to arrive at the registration venue. At 9.05am the walkers set off, "Cinq, quatre, trois, deux, un, allez!", and with happy memories of the start of the cross-country run at Dannevirke North Primary School when I was a nipper sparkling in my mind, I set off at a good pace. We strolled through the lovely village of Verfeil, with cheers and clapping from the locals, balloons, and a brass band playing, all to encourage us on. The runners had left five minutes before us, and once we reached the little country lanes it was clear that hundreds of feet had passed this way before us. The mud was impressive, helped by pretty constant rain over the previous two days. But it was lovely. There's nothing I like more than a walk in the French countryside, especially with the wonderful walking trails that take you hither and thither off the regular roads and through to private quiet seclusions.

Like this, only muddier...

The first five to eight kilometres passed quite nicely. I was feeling the pain but it was a nice pain. I was missing Marie though and chatted aloud to myself at times. At about 10 kms, my thoughts changed dramatically. "What the feck am I doing this for?? Why couldn't I be happy with a 20 minute walk around the block from my house?? I'm sooo tired! I want to stop!" Then I remembered something really important: a sneaky ploy to keep the runners and walkers going. On the last walk, as Marie and I were getting ready to throw our toys out of the pram, we stumbled across a tent in the middle of the mud full of drinks, snacks and crepes. Cor! And again on this walk, after almost losing the use of my limbs as I forced myself to keep going just a bit further, I smelt the sausages, and I heard a French man running the other way shout, "Vous êtes presque à les saucisses!!" (You are almost at the sausages!) I just about wept.

(In fact, you see quite a bit of 'Toulouse sausage' around as you take the walking/running trail, as the men from Toulouse are not ashamed to relieve themselves as the need arises, in full view. It's very refreshing!)
I never feel like drinking Coke, but this time I did, and I also grabbed dried fruit, cheese, and a wedge of bread to stuff my very own portion of barbecued Toulouse sausage inside. The nice man manning the BBQ had about fifteen of these lovely curled up sausages sizzling away. I ate as I walked and I felt good.

Toulouse sausage

The vertical climbs didn't feel so bad after that, and I think I was basically numb to any more slides in the mud, so I got on with the job. I kindly let a few walkers pass me so that they could feel better about their progress, and I needed to look at the view anyway. I crossed a road where one of the marshalls directed me with, "Tout droit, Madame! Tout droit!" as I was about to take the easy path back to the village rather than cross muddy fields again. And I passed so many laden figs trees I just about cried. I love figs but I didn't have the capacity left to stop and get any. Damn.

Too-delicious figs

So eventually a nice marshall said that there was one more kilometre to go. He didn't mention the final vertical climb to the finish line. One runner was cussing fiercely as her two male companions slowed down to encourage her on, and then they let her run ahead and finish before them. So French! So gentlemanly!
And I finished too. I don't know what my time was and I didn't care. It was over. I could go home. I could stop moving; no, wait, I had to walk back to the car. Thankfully the car started (it has been known not to) and I a little deliriously drove home to my lovely family who were full of finds from the local vide grenier (sort of a car boot sale but spread through the streets) at Auzeville.

My conclusion is this: the pain is over, and I loved it! I want to do it again! And the next one is on a shorter course in Verfeil, and AT NIGHT! to raise money for French Telethon that supports lots of charities. I'm going to drag Marie along whether she likes it or not, and our friend Maggie. It is obligatory to wear little head torches, and it's only 10km, and there's going to be mulled wine (vin chaud) at the finish line. Hurry up the 7th of December!

Read more on www.trailducassoulet.fr
and, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_du_Midi
and, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Paul_Riquet
and, http://www.bonrepos-riquet.fr/-Le-Chateau-de-Bonrepos-Riquet-.html?lang=en

Chateau Riquet at Bonrepos-Riquet, the home of Pierre-Paul Riquet

(p.s. if you pre-ordered lunch, at registration today you were given a ceramic bowl and a tin of cassoulet from Castlenaudry for lunch, which is Toulouse sausage, other meats and white beans. It's very, very filling and means nil-by-mouth for the next couple of days. And of course, the salle (local hall) was lined with chairs, and tables (with tablecloths, cutlery and wine glasses), which is so very French for an after-event luncheon.)

Cassoulet in the traditional ceramic bowl

A bit about Brittany

We were in Brittany recently, and we had a Very Important Purpose in visiting. We had spent a week in Normandy (see previous posts) and thought, "What the heck. We may never be back this way again so we'd better check Brittany out," especially as friends of ours who now live in New Zealand used to live there. She's a New Zealander, he's a Frenchman-chef-extraordinaire from Brittany. They used to run an extremely popular restaurant called Le Canotier in a town called Tréguier. We had to go there! So we conducted some hasty research and planned our route.

We started with lunch in Cancale which is on a jutting-out peninsula not far from the lovely (I'm told) Saint Malo.

Fishing village, Cancale, Brittany

It was incredibly busy there so we found a fishy restaurant far away from the central streets, in a beautiful position overlooking the sea which was directly across the road. We kept placing bets as to how far the tide would go out, 'To that blue boat; to that buoy, no, to that fishing boat...' None of us were right, and it was still going out when we finished our lunch. We saw groups of friends on the beach prising open fresh oyster shells to squeeze in a squirt of lemon juice and then gulp the oysters down, chased by a glass of wine and some fresh French baguette. They looked so happy!

From there we made our way to Tréguier. I didn't really know what to expect of Tréguier but we had the name of the street where our friends' restaurant used to be, so off we went to climb rue Ernest Renan. (Tréguier is BEAUTIFUL. It is listed as one of the villages fleuris in France, which I take to mean: prettiest villages.)

Tréguier

Tréguier

Apparently, Tréguier is best known for being the birthplace of St Yves, the patron saint of lawyers, and Catholic lawyers from around the world have been known to make pilgrimages to Tréguier to pay homage. Well, we certainly weren't there for that purpose.

Ye gods, there's a skull in that glass-fronted box! in Tréguier cathedral

Our friends, Cathie and Stéphane (not in the photograph below...), now have a café in Wellington (Café Breton, no less), and on a wall in their café they have several black and whites photos of Tréguier quite some decades ago. People with wooden clogs on and strange but beautiful clothes (almost costumes), that sort of thing.

Traditional Breton costumes, around 1900

We searched high and low along rue Ernest Renan, up through the village, close to the cathedral, to find the site of Le Canotier. Nope, nothing. I asked in a tourist shop. No, never heard of it. I knew we were on the right street so I told my eight year old son that I was going to pop into a jewellery shop and ask if they knew of Le Canotier. As I stepped inside, Oliver pulled my arm and whispered, "Mum. Those people just there on the street are talking about the restaurant, and they're talking about New Zealand and our friends Cathie and Stéphane!" 

Vraiment???!  Of course, Oliver was listening to them speak in French.

I quickly walked up to them, smiling broadly and in my best French said, "My son said you were talking about New Zealand, and Cathie and Stéphane. They are friends of ours. We are from New Zealand. We want to find where their restaurant was." Ha ha ha, we all laughed. Quelle coïncidence. Then the nice Monsieur said, "Well, you are standing right in front of it." Turns out Monsieur and Madame were showing their visitors the site of the wonderful Le Canotier restaurant, opposite the jewellery shop, too. (Sadly it is now a real estate agent and a pizza place and not a popular, buzzing restaurant.)

On rue Ernest Renan, outside Le Canotier (formerly), chatting with Monsieur

We chatted for a while and found that Monsieur's father and Stéphane's father used to be great friends. Mission accomplished! Apparently Cathie and Stéphane's sister-in-law runs a charcuterie truck that sells yummy pate and anything in the pig line in the local markets. Her brand is 'Henriette'; so keep an eye out!

We then took a turn along winding country roads to find La Roche-Derrien, where C&S used to lived. Why oh why did they move to New Zealand? I cried as each turn in the road took us to more breath catching beauty.

Moving swiftly along, we took the coastal route around the Granite Coast (Trégastel, Perros-Guirrec, etc). Beautiful pinky rocks, rugged and wild seas, nothing like the long calm beaches of Normandy. This was raw, beautiful nature, like the west coast of New Zealand I thought.  (read more about the Granite Coast on: http://www.francethisway.com/places/brittany-cote-de-granit-rose.php) From there we drove to our completely forgettable (preferably forgettable) cheap family accommodation for the night. That's all I'm saying about that.

Day two: let's see some menhirs and dolmen, and alignments (rows of standing stones)! This had been a big dream of mine since I starting reading Asterix and Obelix as a nipper. We knew the kids would like this, and we promised that we wouldn't drag them to any cathedrals. We went to 'The Carnac Alignments, an exceptional Neolithic site with 6,000 year old megaliths', so says the brochure.  It's still all (educated) supposition as to why the alignments are there (sacred burial architecture vs ceremonial temples...), but they were continually constructed between the fifth and third millenia BC so something important was happening in the minds of those people for two millenia. Crikey. I've been inside an ancient dolmen (a stone table, sometimes with a burial passage underneath) in Ireland and it felt spookily the same to be in Carnac seeing/touching similar stuff.

Carnac alignments

Dolmen at Carnac

Then with our brains a-whirring we headed towards Saint-Pierre-Quiberon, passing through and heading straight down the waist-thin peninsula to Quiberon itself. Another raw, lovely, fishy-restaurant-with-gorgeous-sea-views, heaving-with-tourists, quaint, delightful, completely unique village.

Quiberon peninsual at the narrowest point

We ate lunch there, wandered a bit and headed to our much more comfortable (clean) family accommodation.

I really want to call Brittany 'Little Britain' but I know the name has already been taken by those two funny guys. For me, Brittany could be parts of England/Ireland/Wales as they look so similar. In fact, I've just had a look at Wikipedia and this is what I found:

Brittany is considered as one of the six Celtic nations, which are: Brittany (Breizh), Cornwall (Kernow), Ireland (Éire), the Isle of Man (Mannin), Scotland (Alba), and Wales (Cymru); and are territories in Northern and Western Europe. Each of these regions has a Celtic language that is either still spoken or was spoken into modern times, and their own cultural traits. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain (as opposed to Great Britain).

So, not far off. I've been told that people in Wales who speak Welsh can understand French people in Brittany who speak Breton. Incredible. Some other striking things about Brittany are:

• the dish of the region is: galettes/crêpes and cider, while the dish of Normandy is moules et frites (mussels and french fries);
• in the north of Brittany you see slate tiles on the houses and people look more Anglo-Saxon; in the south of Brittany you see red Roman roofing tiles, and people with Roman noses!
• Brittany beaches are rugged and wild - like the south coast of Wellington, New Zealand. Normandy beaches are more similar to Auckland/Northland beaches. (Nice but strange to have a sense of New Zealand so far away,);
• the names of the towns/villages seemed to generally fall into different categories, for example: the 'Tré...' names (Tréguier, Trégastel, Trévé, Trémousen), the 'Plou...' names (Ploufragan, Ploumagaor, Plougonver, Plouisy, they go on and on), and the ones with the crazy apostrophes, like Ploumanc'h or the surnames Guivarc'h or Wrac'h. Hu'h???

Not enough time, we wanted to see more, but la rentrée was looming and you can't ignore la rentrée. One day I'll go back there; it was wonderful, and so different from Toulouse and the south of France. Vive la France!

Singing for restoration

What can happen in one weekend? Well, mine consisted of a day and a half of rehearsals with a cobbled together choir, resulting in a stirring, standing-ovation-inducing concert for the monumental purpose of the restoration of the Eglise Saint Corneille, nestled in the warmth of the lovely village of Puycelsi in the Tarn departement. Phew.

Eglise Saint Corneille, Puycelsi

Puycelsi, Tarn

Eglise Saint Corneille, Puycelsi

For the past four years I have been involved in these fund-raising concerts. An Association was created in 2006 for this purpose after a regular visitor to the church noticed how severe the water-damage was becoming, plus the effects of general weathering over time. Well, it was built in the 13/14th centuries so it wasn't surprising, but clearly something had to be done. And Scotsman (now living in Puycelsi) Ross Jenkins did it by creating the Association for the Restoration of Saint Corneille (Association pour la Restauration de Saint Corneille or ARC). Thank goodness he did, because the water damage is now under control and various bits and bobs are being replaced, restored, repainted and renewed. It's getting truly gorgeous again. The blue and gold on the ceiling is too beautiful!

The interior of Eglise Saint Corneille, ripe for restoration

To raise funds, volunteer participants initially came together for a weekend, to practice and sing Handel's Messiah to a fee paying audience, with the idea that the music is learnt in advance and that the weekend would be a bringing-it-all-together time. This was the routine for some few years before the programme extended to include other works. So far I've had the enormous privilege of singing Handel's Messiah, Fauré's Requiem and Mozart's Requiem, with extremely talented soloists, an organist, Nicholas O'Neill, who is shipped in from England, and conductor Mark Opstad. Mark is the Professeur de chant choral at the Conservatoire de Toulouse where he created and directs the Maîtrise de Toulouse. He is a remarkable conductor. Kindness personified yet able to draw the best from us all, all of the time coupled with the symbiotic link he has with the organist who keeps up with everything we are doing without a moment's distraction. And I have to mention the look on Mark's face when he stops us mid-chord and says, 'I can hear an E flat. It should be an E,' or words to that effect. His ability to hear that amongst almost 70 voices is staggering.

Here's the way it happens:

• Some months ago: receive the music list by email and purchase/order/print the music. Learn it. Really well. In groups or in front of YouTube,
• Saturday: arrive after lunch for registration and the first two hours of rehearsal. The jovial greeting from Ross Jenkins is in itself worth the drive from Toulouse,
• 4pm: cup of tea in the local hall (salle polyvalent), involving an invigorating descent to the hall then a slow incline back up the hill to the church to rehearse for two more hours (full of tea and cake),
• 7pm: leave for the day. Some stay overnight in Puycelsi or the surrounds (try www.lapremierevigne.com for some seriously gorgeous chambre d'hôte accommodation in the middle of 1.4 hectares of natural park and forest), while others return to their homes,
• Sunday: arrive at 10am for two hours' rehearsal with the soloists this time,
• midday: lunch in the salle polyvalent prepared by Ginny Jenkins and her merry mix of helpers. Delicious! Main course, cheese course then dessert. And the main course was, of course, Coronation chicken! Ha ha ha. This year it was followed for me by coffee in the local Roc cafe with my new friends from Lavaur,
• 2pm: two more hours' practise, and this year it was more fine-tuning in my opinion than desperately thinking how the ^*&% am I (are we) going to pull this off?!,
• We are then magnetically pulled towards the salle polyvalent again for more revitalising sustenance of tea, scones, jam and cream! This keeps us going until concert time (6pm) before which we find a nook somewhere, change clothes, try to look composed and gorgeous and completely calm.  Previous years have seen temperatures in the high 20s. This year it was positively chilly but polar fleeces are removed before we entered the church. (I've never known it to be warmer inside a church in France than outside...)
• As the church bells rang for 6pm we file in for the well-sold-out-in-advance concert, and whereupon we sing our little hearts out. The applause afterwards and the standing ovation and the encore and the drinks and nibbles outside and the drawing of the raffle winners is a perfect way to finish the evening.

This year's treat was Mozart's 'Coronation Mass', Handel's' Zadok the Priest', Wesley's 'Thou Wilt Keep Him in Perfect Peace', Parry's 'I was Glad' plus a Handel soprano solo (encore! encore! Zena Baker!) and an organ solo of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance (by said organist and rock-star-in-his-spare-time, Nicholas O'Neill). It was really hard not to get all jolly and slightly crazy like the Brits do at the Night of the Proms. And have you guessed yet? Yes. It was in celebration of the Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of England's long and glorious reign and was the music from her Coronation in 1953. My favourite work so far though has to be Gabriel Fauré's Requiem. I sang  music by a French composer, in France. Cool!
The best thing is that apart from the soloists, conductor and organist, all the rest of us are quite simply enthusiastic singers who love to sing, many of whom do sing in other choirs and are frightfully good (I'm talking about you, Angela R).  I'm told that our joint nationalities cover France, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, and I must add, New Zealand. It was such a pleasure to re-acquaint with old friends, and easily slip into new friendships.

I don't want to sound twee... but is it possible to express how soul-soaring it is to sing as part of a harmonious group, professionally conducted and accompanied? To explain how passages of music embed themselves in the neurons and play over and over in my head, day and night, unbidden but so welcomed? Or the sheer delight/eruption of joy at creating beautiful music with others just by using this normal voice of mine? This voice that rises to challenges and heights that it didn't know it could achieve? (Tip from the conductor on how to get the top notes: drop the jaw open, think the note and arrive at it from above. When you're singing top A, you need all the help you can get). And listening to a work of music, say, for a random example, the Coronation Mass, and not really warming to it, then by the end of the weekend absolutely flippin' loving it?

The closest I've got to that feeling of musical inter-connectedness with others was in the Piako Brass Band in which I played the cornet when I was 17. I loved being surrounded by the resonance of brass instruments. After that it was in a music/drama group called Y-ONE 1987, that toured New Zealand for a year, in which I played keyboards in the band and sang backing vocals. Oh, and the magnificent combined choirs and orchestra concert extravaganzas that were held in the Auckland Domain in the 1990s, to thousands of people. I sang in the choir for two years and the memories are still spine-tingling.
Next weekend there's a vide grenier (car boot sale) in our local school grounds at which we intend to make a pile of coins by selling our accumulated 'stuff'. Last year my daughter made a killing on her old Barbie dolls.

For more information on ARC, contact Ross Jenkins, 05 63 33 15 84 ross.jenkins@orange.fr. To find out more about the talented Mark Opstad, visit: www.markopstad.com and www.maitrise.crr.toulouse.fr. For more information on the rock-star organist, Nicholas O'Neill, visit: www.nicholasoneill.com. And big thanks to Ross and Ginny Jenkins, again, for being the driving force behind this wonderful weekend!

For more photos of Puycelsi, visit: http://www.france-voyage.com/communes/puycelsi-32932.htm