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Gascony Diary
The two months of
high summer here in the Gers have passed in a
flurry of activity with family, friends and
guests, - both paying and non-paying - coming
here for their holidays. The house we bought
little over a year ago now rings to the memories
of late night barbeques by the pool, French,
English and Spanish children throwing sticks for
the dogs or feeding the horses handfuls of hay
and of sitting on the terrace as night fell,
drinking wine and chatting. Our lovely gascon
house has now really become a home.
There are other
memories too. It was a summer in which about
four hundred of us ate paella under the floodlit
plane trees of the village square on the last
night of the fete. When we watched the local
youths play five a side football with the added
handicap of a bull running in the arena with
them. When we feasted on barbequed chicken and
armagnac at a local vineyard, slowly sipping eau
de vie to the music of a local band and when the
horses were ridden late in the evening to escape
the heat, moving quietly along empty lanes with
only the lazy kites and buzzards circling
overhead for company.
But now in the
early days of September, although swimming and
wearing shorts and going barefoot is still the
order of the day, the dawn sees dewy grass and
soft mists in the valleys. The Chasse has
started shooting in the stubble fields below the
house and the house martins and swallows are
lining up in their hundreds on the telephone
wires. There is a subtle hint that summer is
coming to an end.
Whilst the corn
harvest is long since over, the kitchen harvest
is now in full swing: Gifts of purple figs and
sticky sweet grapes are flying between
neighbours and friends. Plastic bags, bursting
with large strangely shaped tomatoes or peppers
have been brought to my door by Madame Russo
down the lane, along with pots of homemade
tomato couli. Tomato and garlic has been roasted
and sieved, then simmered again to concentrate
the flavour and now sits in the freezer
alongside blackberries from the hedgerows and
bags of ratatouille. Damson cheese has been
potted and is already being eaten on warm
croissants and the sloes are quietly macerating
in the gin, hopefully to be ready for Christmas.
I saw my first field mushroom, as big as a
dinner plate, on a field bank yesterday. The
chainsaw and land rover have had their first
trip to the woods as thoughts turn to winter
fires and repairing the guttering on the oak
barn goes higher up the ’to do’ list than it has
been during the summer.
Meanwhile the
social scene of summer gives way to that of
Autumn. Those of us living here all year have
been receiving and sending e-mails and phone
calls organising lunches and outings with
friends we may have met only rarely during the
busy summer months. There will be more meeting
in the cafés, dinners around open fires, long
canters on the stubble fields and swopping books
and dvds for the winter months. But not so
fast!! The glorious soft yellow light of Autumn
is only just upon us.
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