It only took a few hours to set things right. The shutters were thrown open, the floors vacuumed and washed and the beds made -up.
The sun was shining and we waved to our neighbour Andre and his wife Solange. They came over full of their usual charm and friendliness to greet us. Problems were discussed, Mark waving his arms and speaking Australian with a French flair; I was speaking my inadequate French and trying hard to understand their strong accent. They disappeared and came back with a charger to reinvigorate our dead car battery. All was well with the world we thought as we sat under the chestnut trees that evening basking in the balmy long evenings of the northern climes and enjoying our first French meal with a bottle of Rose. What could be better?
Our two weeks was spent re-acquainting ourselves with our favourite haunts. Walks along the top of the ridge looking down across the Valley towards the village of Le Fossat and the still snow-capped Pyrenees beyond. Restaurants in Foix, Pamiers,Carla Bayle and Toulouse where we dined on delicacies, flavours and sauces so sublime as to make our taste buds cry out for more. A feast of visual seduction. Duck breast to die for, carpaccio of salmon in delicate vinaigrette, memorable Grand Marnier soufflé, herb crusted cod, the most tender and succulent local lamb chops, and the list goes on. What about my waist line I can hear you all shout. Well, I did the French thing and skipped the next meal. The fashionably thin, blazingly chic Parisian women are not evident in this part of France, thank goodness. The comfortable farmer size build of our neighbours suits this environment. Where the Parisian woman is all entrance; effect and brilliance; the country women are built and dressed for the long haul. After all, you cannot hoe the vegetables and feed the chickens and rabbits in anything remotely resembling fashionable.
While on the subject of French fashion. The numerous French lingerie shops in every city have always fascinated me, particularly in the bigger cities. How on earth I wonder can they all sell enough lingerie to warrant that many shops. While I salivate over the froths of lace and silk displayed in the windows it is rarely that I have had the courage to actually enter. French lingerie is about class and sex and the wisps of materials that are displayed therein are enough to intimidate a nice English/Australian girl wearing Marks and Spencer’s sensible white knickers and sporting a bra size slightly bigger than the average French lady. Although looking through the village ladies this does have to be qualified. Many of them buy their bras from the local village van that comes around every month. These vans are stocked to the roof with large comfortable sized knickers and bras big enough to hurl petanque balls into the next village. I have looked up statistics relating to the buying of underwear, and they state that French women spend 20% of their budget on lingerie. I am not sure what budget this is. Maybe that is why the average French woman is so thin instead of buying a full quota of groceries 20% has to go towards their lingerie expenditure. The women in this region of France have no such budget their food is home grown. Tomatoes, beans, lettuce, corn, potatoes, all vegetables carefully nurtured and tended and enough to last all year round. Chickens and ducks scratch in the garden providing eggs and meat. Our neighbours even make their own Foie Gras for Christmas. Rabbits are farmed and there is usually at least a couple of sheep or goats.
It is a true country life and so different from the chic city French woman who inhabits a completely different demographic.