Deliciously Dysfunctional Dordogne - A Trip Report
Aug 28th, 2008 | 08:05 AM
#62
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 5
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I was really enjoying your post up until the point of the 'slurping perfectly ripe white nectarines' and then I think I lost consciousness! We were in your area in June of 2007, and I absolutely fell in love. Can't wait for more posts!
Sep 3rd, 2008 | 11:27 AM
#65
Original Poster
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 49,560
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Sorry, folks, I took a Time Out to go to the Bahamas to see my daughter off to Semester at Sea....occasioning a whole new trip report about my misadventures there.
Will get back to this shortly, though...so many trip reports, so little time.....
Will get back to this shortly, though...so many trip reports, so little time.....
Sep 9th, 2008 | 03:07 PM
#69
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Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 49,560
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T and I head to Périgueux late in the afternoon to pick up M at the train station. We’ve completed the first round of weeding and clearing, at least enough so we can sit along the wall and rest our feet. We’ve made all the beds and set out towels and stocked the pantry and the fridge, because not only is M arriving today, but sometime in the middle of the night the rest of the crew arrives – my BIL, his fiancée, her son, and three of my nieces and nephews. By morning, we’ll have a full house. The fullest house we’ve ever had, in fact.
And there’s M in front of the train station, book in hand as always, reading glasses perched on her nose, giving her a terribly studious air. Hugs, kisses, throw the bags in the car, and we’re off, and the dynamic instantly begins to change. T and I are alike in many ways, fairly quiet most of the time, pretty steady and predictable. But M is a fireball – noisy, funny, intense, happy, passionate. The car comes alive the minute she’s in it – music on a CD she’s brought, new jokes to share with her brother, funny tales galore about her plane and train rides. She keeps us amused throughout the drive, and before long we’ve stopped in front of the new Intermarché to get her reaction, which is OMG, then NO!! Wait until she sees the parking lot next to our house…
On the way up the hill to the house we come across Mme. L walking across the lane, my wonderful neighbor and friend, who has looked after our house since we bought it. Who brings us pâté with thick slices of black truffle and homemade wine and fresh eggs from her chickens and ducks. Who grows fluorescent geraniums the size of grapefruit. Whose impish smile and throaty laugh are infectious. Who always has the best gossip and isn’t afraid to share it. Who is one of the world’s premier ranters. Who is always coiffed and tidy in a blue print housedress and doesn’t miss a thing.
She shrieks when we stop the car and she realizes who we are. Comes running (on two replacement hips – she’s 87, I think) to the car window and reaches inside and grabs my face in her hands. A torrent of Occitan-French ensues…she thought she’d never see us again…..Oh My! Look how tall T is! And is that M? Oh My! Where have we been? She thought she’d never see us again! We won’t believe what is happening in the commune – have we seen the new grotte? Have we seen the sculpture? Have we seen Le Parking? Ooooh la la, so many changes in so short a time! All this punctuated, when she releases my face, with hand-wringing, nose-flipping, slaps on the car hood, and general chaotic animation. But beh! We must be tired, so run along and we’ll catch up later…and so we blow kisses and move on around the corner of her house. And M practically loses it when she sees the parking lot full of cars and the Toutes Directions sign, and the newly spruced up Grotte de St-Cirq. She is almost wailing.
And then there’s the rock. As you go by the grotte and up an incline to the entrance to our house, on the right is…well, was….an enormous mushroom-shaped piece of cliff, almost, but not quite, opposite our driveway. Probably 30 meters tall, it bulged out from the side of the cliff like a huge malignant growth. You see them all up and down the Vézère Valley, their tops studded with weed trees, their sides worn smooth with rain and moisture from within the cliffs. In order to pass by our house up the hill, you had to drive under the shadow of this monster rock, on a narrow lane hedged in on the left by the back of our house – the road literally runs right over the house. Only the mushroom rock fell down, or at least a massive bit of it did, about three months ago, blocking access to the lane that runs by our house for weeks. There are still boulders and debris all around, and what’s left of the rock is now held in place with enormous metal cables run between large stakes driven into the rock. It was an eerie sight when it was just natural – now it’s an eerie demolition site. And outside our driveway is a huge pile of splintered rock and boulder that has yet to be cleared away. It’s a good thing T and I cleared away most of the weeds and tidied up the house, because the fallen rock is almost more than M can bear. Funny how kids want everything to remain exactly as it was in their memories and have such trouble when the images change, even if they’re just superficial. To be fair, she’s come a very long way from California and hardly got any sleep the night before she left, but she’s a pretty crispy critter when she finally opens the door to the house.
Then, in an instant, all is good. She smells the woodsmoke odor that permeates the old stone, the furniture is all still there, her favorite bed is made up with her favorite kitschy blankets, the view out her bedroom window is relatively the same, since it’s too high up to be obscured by the trees, the cows are lowing as they always do before dusk when they’re herded back to the barns, the swallows are dipping over the pool, she’s home, and if it’s not quite perfect, it’s certainly serene and familiar.
One of the nifty things I’ve bought at the Bricomarché are a half-dozen solar torches – not those flimsy bamboo ones you see all over gardens in France, but some half-decent ones that are sturdy and really put out a good bit of light if you set them out in the strong sunlight during the day, which I have. M and T jump in the pool and catch up on brother-sister stuff while I put together a light supper of crudités and cornichons and cheese and pâté and ham and baguette for us. It’s still completely light at 7:30 pm, but when the sun goes down here, it’s pitch black unless there’s a moon. We have no streetlamps in St-Cirq. And the cousins are arriving in the middle of the night. So I place the solar torches on either side of the front door, and on either side of the driveway entrance, and two for good measure between the driveway and the door. They’ll illuminate things nicely in a Halloweenish way when night falls.
M hauls out the CD player, which frankly I’m amazed still works given the moisture issues we have here, but it does, and she’s brought, as usual, all kinds of varied and interesting music…Ethiopian, Brazilian, French, jazz, Zydeco…. T sets our simple dinner out on the picnic table under the linden tree, and we bring out beer and wine (and this just makes me feel ancient for a minute – drinking beer and wine with my kids, who started spending summers here when they were 5 and 2!) and munch and sip and reminisce. My kids, bless them, have an indomitable pluck and sense of humor, and have somehow come through some amazingly horrid stuff without losing that. M says “Remember how Dad was always telling us to go make friends….like when you were eating at a café and there were kids playing soccer, and he’d say “Go make friends with those kids…” and we were like “Whaaaat?” And she recalls a time when she was about 9 and T was about 6 and she dressed T up in one of her bathing suits and put his hair, which was fairly long at the time, in two little pigtails, and brought him out to the pool where their dad was sitting and introduced him as “Andrea…her parents are renting the Prieurie house down the road, and she doesn’t have any friends, and they don’t have a pool, so I thought I’d invite her up for the afternoon.” And Dad bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Hardly even looked up from the book he was reading except to take a few pictures of “Andrea,” which I still have. We are howling so hard at this we can hardly breathe, slap-happy, pounding the table with our fists….and M and T are then off with similar tale after tale of our early days here, good memories, not an ounce of bitterness or regretful reshaping of how things might have been…just pure memories of simpler times when we had loads and loads of good fun. As we are having now, still making memories…
And then when the sun goes down, we nap, for the cousins are coming from La Rochelle. Their plane lands at 9:30 pm, and they have to drive in the dark here. We expect them around midnight or one, and we know we’ll be up half the night. Wine, beer, gin and tonics at the ready, plus plenty of good middle-of-the-night food awaits.
And there’s M in front of the train station, book in hand as always, reading glasses perched on her nose, giving her a terribly studious air. Hugs, kisses, throw the bags in the car, and we’re off, and the dynamic instantly begins to change. T and I are alike in many ways, fairly quiet most of the time, pretty steady and predictable. But M is a fireball – noisy, funny, intense, happy, passionate. The car comes alive the minute she’s in it – music on a CD she’s brought, new jokes to share with her brother, funny tales galore about her plane and train rides. She keeps us amused throughout the drive, and before long we’ve stopped in front of the new Intermarché to get her reaction, which is OMG, then NO!! Wait until she sees the parking lot next to our house…
On the way up the hill to the house we come across Mme. L walking across the lane, my wonderful neighbor and friend, who has looked after our house since we bought it. Who brings us pâté with thick slices of black truffle and homemade wine and fresh eggs from her chickens and ducks. Who grows fluorescent geraniums the size of grapefruit. Whose impish smile and throaty laugh are infectious. Who always has the best gossip and isn’t afraid to share it. Who is one of the world’s premier ranters. Who is always coiffed and tidy in a blue print housedress and doesn’t miss a thing.
She shrieks when we stop the car and she realizes who we are. Comes running (on two replacement hips – she’s 87, I think) to the car window and reaches inside and grabs my face in her hands. A torrent of Occitan-French ensues…she thought she’d never see us again…..Oh My! Look how tall T is! And is that M? Oh My! Where have we been? She thought she’d never see us again! We won’t believe what is happening in the commune – have we seen the new grotte? Have we seen the sculpture? Have we seen Le Parking? Ooooh la la, so many changes in so short a time! All this punctuated, when she releases my face, with hand-wringing, nose-flipping, slaps on the car hood, and general chaotic animation. But beh! We must be tired, so run along and we’ll catch up later…and so we blow kisses and move on around the corner of her house. And M practically loses it when she sees the parking lot full of cars and the Toutes Directions sign, and the newly spruced up Grotte de St-Cirq. She is almost wailing.
And then there’s the rock. As you go by the grotte and up an incline to the entrance to our house, on the right is…well, was….an enormous mushroom-shaped piece of cliff, almost, but not quite, opposite our driveway. Probably 30 meters tall, it bulged out from the side of the cliff like a huge malignant growth. You see them all up and down the Vézère Valley, their tops studded with weed trees, their sides worn smooth with rain and moisture from within the cliffs. In order to pass by our house up the hill, you had to drive under the shadow of this monster rock, on a narrow lane hedged in on the left by the back of our house – the road literally runs right over the house. Only the mushroom rock fell down, or at least a massive bit of it did, about three months ago, blocking access to the lane that runs by our house for weeks. There are still boulders and debris all around, and what’s left of the rock is now held in place with enormous metal cables run between large stakes driven into the rock. It was an eerie sight when it was just natural – now it’s an eerie demolition site. And outside our driveway is a huge pile of splintered rock and boulder that has yet to be cleared away. It’s a good thing T and I cleared away most of the weeds and tidied up the house, because the fallen rock is almost more than M can bear. Funny how kids want everything to remain exactly as it was in their memories and have such trouble when the images change, even if they’re just superficial. To be fair, she’s come a very long way from California and hardly got any sleep the night before she left, but she’s a pretty crispy critter when she finally opens the door to the house.
Then, in an instant, all is good. She smells the woodsmoke odor that permeates the old stone, the furniture is all still there, her favorite bed is made up with her favorite kitschy blankets, the view out her bedroom window is relatively the same, since it’s too high up to be obscured by the trees, the cows are lowing as they always do before dusk when they’re herded back to the barns, the swallows are dipping over the pool, she’s home, and if it’s not quite perfect, it’s certainly serene and familiar.
One of the nifty things I’ve bought at the Bricomarché are a half-dozen solar torches – not those flimsy bamboo ones you see all over gardens in France, but some half-decent ones that are sturdy and really put out a good bit of light if you set them out in the strong sunlight during the day, which I have. M and T jump in the pool and catch up on brother-sister stuff while I put together a light supper of crudités and cornichons and cheese and pâté and ham and baguette for us. It’s still completely light at 7:30 pm, but when the sun goes down here, it’s pitch black unless there’s a moon. We have no streetlamps in St-Cirq. And the cousins are arriving in the middle of the night. So I place the solar torches on either side of the front door, and on either side of the driveway entrance, and two for good measure between the driveway and the door. They’ll illuminate things nicely in a Halloweenish way when night falls.
M hauls out the CD player, which frankly I’m amazed still works given the moisture issues we have here, but it does, and she’s brought, as usual, all kinds of varied and interesting music…Ethiopian, Brazilian, French, jazz, Zydeco…. T sets our simple dinner out on the picnic table under the linden tree, and we bring out beer and wine (and this just makes me feel ancient for a minute – drinking beer and wine with my kids, who started spending summers here when they were 5 and 2!) and munch and sip and reminisce. My kids, bless them, have an indomitable pluck and sense of humor, and have somehow come through some amazingly horrid stuff without losing that. M says “Remember how Dad was always telling us to go make friends….like when you were eating at a café and there were kids playing soccer, and he’d say “Go make friends with those kids…” and we were like “Whaaaat?” And she recalls a time when she was about 9 and T was about 6 and she dressed T up in one of her bathing suits and put his hair, which was fairly long at the time, in two little pigtails, and brought him out to the pool where their dad was sitting and introduced him as “Andrea…her parents are renting the Prieurie house down the road, and she doesn’t have any friends, and they don’t have a pool, so I thought I’d invite her up for the afternoon.” And Dad bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Hardly even looked up from the book he was reading except to take a few pictures of “Andrea,” which I still have. We are howling so hard at this we can hardly breathe, slap-happy, pounding the table with our fists….and M and T are then off with similar tale after tale of our early days here, good memories, not an ounce of bitterness or regretful reshaping of how things might have been…just pure memories of simpler times when we had loads and loads of good fun. As we are having now, still making memories…
And then when the sun goes down, we nap, for the cousins are coming from La Rochelle. Their plane lands at 9:30 pm, and they have to drive in the dark here. We expect them around midnight or one, and we know we’ll be up half the night. Wine, beer, gin and tonics at the ready, plus plenty of good middle-of-the-night food awaits.
Sep 9th, 2008 | 05:15 PM
#71
Original Poster
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 49,560
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susanna: he really did look like Jim Carrey! That is hilarious!
Proenza, my intention is certainly not to intimidate anyone. Really, this stuff just comes rolling out of my brain onto the screen. I don't even edit it (well, for my publisher I do, but that's something else entirely). It's just my chronicling of what goes on and what I think as it does go on. Is all. Really. No intimidation at all....just hope it's a good read and a good think for a few folks.
Proenza, my intention is certainly not to intimidate anyone. Really, this stuff just comes rolling out of my brain onto the screen. I don't even edit it (well, for my publisher I do, but that's something else entirely). It's just my chronicling of what goes on and what I think as it does go on. Is all. Really. No intimidation at all....just hope it's a good read and a good think for a few folks.
Sep 9th, 2008 | 06:42 PM
#72
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 10,819
Likes: 0
StCirq, your writing delights, amuses, engenders thought (and maybe even a tiny bit of envy sometimes) but never intimidates. Please keep on writing! One day when there are awards for the best written posts you will carry home a truckload of "Fodies."
Sep 10th, 2008 | 12:14 AM
#75
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 13,681
Likes: 0
Oh StCirq it seems like ages since your first instalment. I've been checking daily to see if you've had time to add another chapter - thank you for such a wonderful read.
Can you tell me what is Occitan-French? A dialect??
Thanks, waiting with great excitement for the next instalment!
Can you tell me what is Occitan-French? A dialect??
Thanks, waiting with great excitement for the next instalment!
Sep 10th, 2008 | 05:36 AM
#76
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Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 49,560
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cathies:
Occitan is a language in its own right, not a dialect. My neighbors all speak it as their first language. But when they speak to foreigners like me they speak French...or try to. It's heavily doused with bits of Occitan, though. So, for example, when they talk about "bread," they will often say "lou pan" instead of "le pain," just to use a simple example. And their accent in French is very strong, like that of provençal speakers, so that "matin" becomes" "mataaaiiiing" and "vin" becomes "vaaiing." It took me ages to get used to it, but I'm OK with it now, though I respond in regular French.
Occitan is a language in its own right, not a dialect. My neighbors all speak it as their first language. But when they speak to foreigners like me they speak French...or try to. It's heavily doused with bits of Occitan, though. So, for example, when they talk about "bread," they will often say "lou pan" instead of "le pain," just to use a simple example. And their accent in French is very strong, like that of provençal speakers, so that "matin" becomes" "mataaaiiiing" and "vin" becomes "vaaiing." It took me ages to get used to it, but I'm OK with it now, though I respond in regular French.
Sep 10th, 2008 | 10:22 AM
#77
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 4,037
Likes: 0
St. Cirq, for as much time as I've spent on this site, somehow I've never read one of your reports before. Now I know why you have such a devoted following. Count me in. This is wonderful. I'm enjoying it all, especially your reactions to drinking with your grown children. I've always enjoyed my children more the older they got and being able to have a glass of wine with them is one of my all time favorite milestones.
Looking forward to more--and to the book.
Looking forward to more--and to the book.
Sep 10th, 2008 | 11:54 AM
#78
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 12,076
Likes: 0
StCirq: <i>Really, this stuff just comes rolling out of my brain onto the screen. I don't even edit it...</i>
Yeah. That's what I like about it.
Most folks, their trip reports could use a lot more editing. Yours are so in-the-moment, so experiential, that their "rambling" quality only adds to the flavor and the texture.
The fact that I've been to your little hamlet allows me to picture it all (at least somewhat) in my mind's eye.
So, keep going. Please.
Yeah. That's what I like about it.
Most folks, their trip reports could use a lot more editing. Yours are so in-the-moment, so experiential, that their "rambling" quality only adds to the flavor and the texture.
The fact that I've been to your little hamlet allows me to picture it all (at least somewhat) in my mind's eye.
So, keep going. Please.
Sep 10th, 2008 | 12:29 PM
#79
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 23,437
Likes: 0
<i>Occitan is a language in its own right, not a dialect. My neighbors all speak it as their first language.</i>
This issue has arisen before. So I asked some local residents in my (how I hate the possessive in this instance) local hamlet in the Périgord vert. These are individuals in their sixties and seventies. Sometimes their parents spoke the <i>patois</i> (their term) with each other, but French with their children, so that the children (now retired) understand the <i>patois</i> but cannot speak it. Some even claimed that people in adjoining villages could not understand each other when they used their own <i>patois</i>. As a standardized language, Occitan is a re-creation of the 19th and 20th century. One of its main proponents lived in Mussidan and I believe was instrumental in reviving the <i>félibrée</i>.
This issue has arisen before. So I asked some local residents in my (how I hate the possessive in this instance) local hamlet in the Périgord vert. These are individuals in their sixties and seventies. Sometimes their parents spoke the <i>patois</i> (their term) with each other, but French with their children, so that the children (now retired) understand the <i>patois</i> but cannot speak it. Some even claimed that people in adjoining villages could not understand each other when they used their own <i>patois</i>. As a standardized language, Occitan is a re-creation of the 19th and 20th century. One of its main proponents lived in Mussidan and I believe was instrumental in reviving the <i>félibrée</i>.
Sep 10th, 2008 | 12:43 PM
#80
Original Poster
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 49,560
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Michael:
My neighbors, mostly in their 80s and 90s, also call it patois. I believe they have been conditioned to do that. My understanding is that it is a true language, not a patois or dialect, but that within the Occitan language are several dialects - Langedocien, provençal, etc.
I'm not sure what you mean be "a recreation." It's been around a lot longer than the 19th century. Fédéric Mistral was responsible for making it known to a relatively wide circle, and for publishing his poetry in it.
There is a bournat in Les Eyzies that is pretty active. And Occitan is taught in some schools, and by a fair number of private teachers, throughout the Périgord Noir. I can't speak to other regions in the Périgord. The Félibrée is becoming more and more popular every year. It's similar to what has been happening with Breton over the past few decades.
My neighbors, mostly in their 80s and 90s, also call it patois. I believe they have been conditioned to do that. My understanding is that it is a true language, not a patois or dialect, but that within the Occitan language are several dialects - Langedocien, provençal, etc.
I'm not sure what you mean be "a recreation." It's been around a lot longer than the 19th century. Fédéric Mistral was responsible for making it known to a relatively wide circle, and for publishing his poetry in it.
There is a bournat in Les Eyzies that is pretty active. And Occitan is taught in some schools, and by a fair number of private teachers, throughout the Périgord Noir. I can't speak to other regions in the Périgord. The Félibrée is becoming more and more popular every year. It's similar to what has been happening with Breton over the past few decades.
