At last! At last! Some glorious sunshine! And how different everything looks under clear blue skies. The blossoming trees are even more noticeable now – the white more startling against a backdrop of bare brown branches, and the pinks brighter and clearer. We drove past a house with a long driveway, which was lined on each side with alternating dark green fir trees and what had been spindly dry branches, but which were now a cloud of soft purplish pink. It looked so pretty. The French are obviously quite garden-conscious because we have noticed that the farmhouse gardens are always planted ‘for effect’. Splashes of brilliant colour around the houses, in each season, are the order of the day. When they get the time to do it all, I really don’t know. They all work so hard already.
We went to visit our friend Ady, in Peyrusse Vieille, and she had been helping her daughter to slaughter thirty ducks and to get them oven ready, for sale. Being the generous soul that she is, she presented us with a duck breast for our supper. I must just say here, that one breast probably weighs about 200 – 300 gms and is easily enough for two people. We were simply delighted to accept the gift although I had never tried to cook one before. Thank heavens for the internet, though, where I found detailed instructions on a video by the world famous chef, Gordon Ramsay. I followed them precisely and we had a meal fit for a king!
Something that I have never mentioned before is that this area of France still practises bull-fighting, although they do not kill the bulls here. Quite a few of the bigger towns have bull-rings and most of the fights take place around Easter time. Special little black bulls are bred especially for the purpose and it is a great excuse for a party. On the top of a hill near to Aignan is a huge cut-out of a bull advertising the Easter bull-fight while at the nearby town of Vic Fezensac, there is an enormous bullring with a large statue of a man facing a bull, outside. I doubt very much if we will be going to view one of these events!
The other thing that we take for granted but perhaps not everyone knows, is the style of building around here. The previous house that we stayed in was originally a double storey stone house with two foot thick walls. (It now has an extension which is modern and brick-built) And stone is a popular building medium for a lot of the older houses. Even older than that though, is what we would refer to as ‘ wattle and daub’, and which is here called ‘colombage’ or ‘half-timbered’. Amazingly, a large number of these houses are still standing, and even more amazing, are occupied. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of them are a few hundred years old. As one drives around past some of the older farms, it is not unusual to see just the remains of an old barn – the skeleton, probably made of oak, still standing long after the weather has taken its toll on the mud or brick filling. It just goes to show that all those things like building regulations which require one to have foundations of a certain depth, damp courses and the like, are really unnecessary for the house to last. As to the comfort of the houses without those attributes, well, I really wouldn’t like to comment. I just think that people in the old days were a lot tougher than we are now, and somehow managed to survive in houses that were cold, damp and unhygienic!
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