Although there are still at least five large boxes of books downstairs
in the cave, we couldn’t bear to let
a lovely day go by without putting it to good use. So, after making a short
detour to visit the recycling centre again, we went off in a completely new direction.
We had no real destination and were just ambling along to see what turned up.
The first village we came to was Salles-Courbaties looking very
picture-postcardish in the afternoon sunlight. It is probably a lot bigger than
one gets at first impression but we thought it delightful – a collection of old
houses clustered around a village pond, complete with swan and wild duck. There
were signs of commercial enterprises along the street but a resident who came
past us to post a letter at the Post Office, which does still operate, told us that everything had been closed for
several years. What a shame. The ex-coffee shop had had a wonderful position at
the bottom end of the pond and I could easily imagine people sitting out on the
terrace on a day such as the one we saw it on but I suppose two people a day
would not have kept them in business.
She also told us that she still lived in what was an old
mill, also at the bottom end of the pond, where a stream had been diverted to
feed it but that it, too had long since ceased to operate. Since she didn’t
offer to show it to us, we didn’t get to see it, sadly.
Continuing along the same road, we were amazed at the amount
of water flowing everywhere. It has certainly rained a lot lately, but it was
almost as if we were driving across a marsh with drainage furrows every now and
again. But sunshine and water always makes for a pretty scene and we enjoyed
our drive. Further along, still on the same road, we came to St Igest, nestled
in a valley. With only a few inhabitants
less than 200, one could hardly imagine it would require a large and elaborate church, but in1927 a
local man was given permission to build a new church to replace the crumbling
Neo-Roman building. I am not sure what happened to the old church but the new
one stands in the centre of the village in a quite beautiful setting, and is a
very beautiful building, if you like ornate decoration, which we do. In the
meadow-like grounds of the church is a replica of the Lourdes Grotto, dedicated
to Saint Theresa and once a year pilgrims gather there and special services are
held. There is an amazingly peaceful feel about the whole place.
Apart from that one excursion we have continued pottering
around the house and trying to improve our French. What an extremely difficult
language it is! Trying to learn from the written version makes it even more
difficult. Half the letters are not pronounced, especially at the end of a
word, but every now and again they are pronounced – just to make things more
interesting perhaps. So, although one calls a small village in the Gers ‘Lupiac’
saying all the letters as they are written, another town up near us called
Carjac is pronounced Kuh-zha. And there is no rule to learn that tells when a
letter is pronounced and when not. The best way to learn, of course, is to talk
to the locals and try to work out just what they are saying, and say it like
that next time!
It was towards the end of last week, I think that I became
hugely despondent when a whole batch of my favourite art works had not turned
up, although we had emptied every box. Among them my very favourite embroidery of
the Edwardian Lady and two water colour paintings done by a relation of mine
many moons ago, of Hermanus and Betty’s Bay. Not wanting to show how devastated
I was, I kept opening box after box in the cave,
labelled ‘Books’ in the vain hope of finding them. No luck! I really couldn’t
believe they were gone. I knew there had been nothing left in the house when we
finally left, and I was equally certain that no boxes had been left behind in
the container. They had to be here. Back and forth we both went; up
and down the stairs. In and out of
every room again and again. Then I heard a yell from upstairs – ‘I’ve found it!’
And he had. Somehow it had got pushed behind a chest of drawers in a corner,
with an empty suitcase and by looking casually I had only seen the suitcase Was
I relieved?! Needless to say they were among the very next things to be put in
their right places.
Neels has been busy repairing some shutters on a window that
opens straight on to the road outside the cave.
As the bottom end of the wooden boards had been at road level for very long
time, they had rotted quite badly and needed painting too. At the time of
writing the repairs have been done and the shutters given their first coat of
paint – a pale lavender blue, of course. Of course!
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