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"My automatic images of ‘being in France’ are initially pictorial: quiet canals lined with trees as regular as comb-teeth[..], dormant vines[..]morning mist[..] working villages with rusting café tables, lunchtime torpor[..]the dusty thud of boules and an all-purpose épicerie[..]."
(Julian Barnes, Something to Declare, 2002)
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Mamers.
Mamers, hidden away in the sarthois countryside and with only 6,000 inhabitants, is the kind of town which tourists might drive through without taking a second glance. However, first impressions are often misleading. After only a few months I was totally captivated by the rural charm of this beautiful town, where the days are punctuated by the church bells and where the pace of life is slow and relaxed: c’est la France profonde… where time poses no obstacles.
Each period of the day in Mamers takes on a different perspective…
At daybreak, the Mamertins carry out their morning preparations…. shopkeepers, so fiercely proud of their work, sweep away the dust from the shop’s entrance…whilst in the cafés, old men sit by the bar, with either a small glass of calvedos or a petit café noir in hand, and philosophise on the state of France. At the end of the morning, as the hands on the church clock near midday, Mamers springs into life. The townspeople bustle in and out of the boulangeries buying their baguettes, the school children rush out onto the streets, on their way home for lunch en famille…and all this against the background of the church bells ringing, calling people home for lunch.
During the lunch period (12.30-14.30) all the shops and cafés close, and a sense of tranquillity descends upon the town: nothing stirs….
Later, twilight in Mamers, the shop windows illuminated against a backdrop of pink and lilac sky…. the old-fashioned lampposts casting eerie shadows across the pavement. The frosty evening air feels clean and refreshing as I make my way across the Place de la République and marvel at how pretty it is with its elegant border of trees adorned in their autumn hues. I’m walking along with my baguette (à la française), passing old men with black bérets (oh-so-quintessentially-French!) shuffling past me. The houses look welcoming, lights shining out from behind closed shutters…And in the distance, the church steeples are silhouetted against the darkening horizon. Hmm, the charm of rural France…
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Mad Dogs & Frenchmen.
11th November, 2001. Paris, Boulevard Saint Germain: homage to Robert Doisneau.
I’m walking along a narrow side street in the direction of the Jardins de Luxembourg; I glance through the window of a café as I pass by and see a waiter seated at a table eating his lunch, sitting on the chair opposite him is a large brown bulldog.
The scene, so ridiculous and yet so magnificently Parisian, passes before my eyes in a moment and is stored away in my memory in the format of a classic black and white postcard, à la Robert Doisneau.
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1st December, 2001. Travelling back from Angers on the T.G.V.
My sense of unease heightens, as I shift uncomfortably under the unerring gaze of the traveller sat opposite me on the train: a beautified, coiffed, and manicured prima donna of a white poodle with a snub nose and superior pose.
At the end of my first three months, the realisation dawns upon me: dogs have civil rights in France. C’est vrai; they have right of way through shop doors, they are given priority for seat reservations on trains and in restaurants, they are paraded around in chic Chanel shoulder bags by their proud owners, and of course, every town in France has a poodle parlour. The beauty of the dog community is paramount.
Hmm..Curious, isn’t it, given that the French are a people often ridiculed for being reluctant to conform to rules. Yet, the rules concerning the comfort and prestige of dogs, though unwritten, remain observed.
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Snapshots.
13th October, 2001. Autun, Burgundy.
Imagine: a quaint town with winding cobbled streets, country lanes and cottages with smoking chimneys, boulevards with classy boutiques and bistros, a magnificent central square with elegant 1920’s style lampposts, and nearby, gardens where men in bérets play boules. All this is perched upon a hill in full fairytale splendour, the maze of streets which make up the town sloping down from its majestic midpoint where the imposing cathedral stands tall, and outside the town, a panorama of forest and lush verdant landscape….truly idyllic.
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5th April, 2002. Montpellier.
Montpellier is everything I imagined a city in the South of France to be, and more. Warm sunshine, like honey, pouring down from the sky in abundance onto the pavement cafés in the Place de la comédie below. Here, all the seats are turned to face the centre of the square, the scene in front forming a sort of stage. Thus the square becomes a point of live theatre in its own right where people sit and watch the world go by.
Wandering around, we find leafy esplanades, à l’espagnole, and parks lined with palm trees, where happy olive skinned children are running around in the sunshine, and chicly dressed business-men, unfazed by the heat, are sitting on benches reading Le Monde. …These are lazy days…everyone enjoying the sun…there’s no rush…
Walking back through the old town, through shady placettes with terrace cafés …people clustered at tables enjoying their aperitif….one is able to understand the allure of the Provence-Languedoc region.
Afternoon. Sitting by a fountain in the Place du marché de fleurs, listening to the now familiar sounds of Montpellier: the chatter and clinking of glasses at pavement cafés, the street musicians playing their melodies, the cascade of water at the fountains, the rumbling of motor bikes and scooters, and dogs barking…hmm, the taste of the Languedoc…
Evening: Rue de petit Saint-Jean. Found a Spanish-cum-provençal restaurant and enjoyed a simple yet delicious meal sitting outside: du vin rouge, salade de tomates, moules à la crème d’ail, tarte de pommes and a café noir. The sun is setting…the luminous orange tones of the sky overhead slowly (in accordance with the "no-rush" mentality of the South, no less!) dimming. And in the background, the hub-hub of conversation drifting from other tables (the sing-song voices of soupy Southern French), and a man playing a guitar, everyone clapping to the flamenco beat…Even during the nocturnal hours, there is always that distant beat of drums and flamenco music….
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16th June, 2002. Biarritz.
A place of paradoxes. The coastline, so natural in its savageness: the force and power of the waves and the rugged rocks…nature untamed…
I stand on the hill by the lighthouse, overlooking the town and the spectacular backdrop of the Pyrenées shrouded in a haze of heat.
Then, in contrast, there is another face of Biarritz…a glitzy, almost film-set atmosphere that the town has. Biarritz is showy: women walking around with poodles, the thermal baths, the casino, the boutiques, the windsurfers….it is a place to be seen.
But this showy exterior is only just holding up, walking around one can see signs that Biarritz has passed its heyday.
The creepy rambling mansions – mausoleums in their own right, their dark windows like eyes looking out on you; the dilapidated synagogue round the corner from our apartment, the windows of the adjoining house, where the Rabbi would have lived, broken, the net curtains swaying in the breeze; the Russian church and the eerie secrecy of the place…and the house next door, dark and desolate…one time I could have sworn I saw the curtains twitching, even though it was meant to be empty..apparently.
In this sense, Biarritz seems sad and soulless, a place of past glory.
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26th June, 2002. Avignon.
Contented moments:
Twilight, the sky darkening: sitting opposite the Palais des Papes which is floodlit against the backdrop of the sky…a spectacular sight. In the background, somewhere in the square, a violin is playing, and there is the bustle of people chatting away at candlelit tables as night closes in on Avignon.
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Looking out from the terrace of the Palais des Papes, the wide sweeping river on one side, and on the other side the town: pink tiled rooftops à la provençale, and swallows flying across….so picturesque.