Bon weekend from a tiny French village with a big heart

*Vaison-la-Romaine in Provence, the leaves are falling off the trees and the twinkling festive lights are being readied – winter is on the way!*

Bonjour

And a big welcome to new friends and a huge re-bonjour to those of you who’ve been friends here for a while!

Occasionally when I sit down to write the newsletter, I have to wrack my brains to think of what to tell you about, because frankly, sometimes (ok, pretty much all the time), not very much happens here in the middle of nowhere rural northern France. This week for instance, the most exciting thing to happen in our village, according to Claudette, my nonagenarian neighbour, and I use the term ‘exciting’ with an element of artistic licence, is that ‘grandson’, as everyone in the village calls the youngest grandchild (though he is in his twenties) of Thierry the Farmer, has been inducted into the village cider club. This, Claudette told me, marks the 5^th generation of the family’s membership into a gang of mostly old geezers in overalls and caps who infrequently get together in barns and sit around talking about nothing in particular, and who pool their apples together once a year to make cider.

Cider, according to Claudette, is one of the great things of life, she swears by a small glass, paired with a bit of belly pork, to start the day and says that she believes this to be the secret to a long and healthy life. Since she’s in her mid-90’s and a sprightly old bird – who am I to disagree. I have tried it but the Brit in me is simple unwilling or unable to give up the morning cup of tea in place of fermented apple juice, and quite honestly tea and pork belly are not a match made in heaven.

Grandson, who is a skinny lad with round glasses, and white-blonde hair (when he was young, we used to call him the Milky Bar Kid! and if you know what I’m talking about, that shows our age!), is the life and soul of the village. He adores being a farmer, always happy and smiling, and he is a genuinely decent person – he helps everyone in the village, lifting shopping into the house for the old ladies when he sees them, uses the bucket of his tractor to help with cleaning or painting houses, and toots the horn on his tractor up in the hills of the Seven Valleys when he’s coming home so as to alert his grandmother (three generations live in a big farmhouse) that he’ll be there for lunch or dinner – at which point just about everyone here says “Bah, grandson’s on his way back!”

As I say, not a lot of thrills, just a village where traditions are loved and community spirit is everything.

Bon weekend from a tiny French village with a big heart

Bisous from France,
Janine
Editor

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