Le Couvent Diary

With just over a fortnight to go I'm beginning to panic about our grape harvest (le vendange). Ali says it will just happen. I, as a Virgo, tend to think we need to plan it a bit. So our unsuspecting pals are about to be coerced into spending a few days bent double over our vines. I fear many of them will feign memory loss when we contact them. " Who are you? Never heard of you. Sorry. Bye"

Our wine cuves are still in northern France despite days on the phone and visiting transporters to beg them to bring them to us in time for the vendange - or indeed ever. We're having no luck with it at all. Looks like all our grapes will have to go to the cave co-operative in Roujan. We'd been very much looking forward to having a go at turning some of our Syrah into stuff that turns our tongues blue. But hey ho.

Meanwhile we are having a charmed summer on the guest front. Not only has it been our best season ever bookings-wise, we have had a stream of utter charmers. Everyone's been a complete delight. Ali and I feel very unstressed thanks to having such lovely, kind, thoughtful and easy people to stay. Thank you, each of you. We've loved having you here - and doesn't the old house smile when it's full of happy people?

We have just five weeks to go before then end of our season and as I sit here in lightweight summer clothes in brilliant sunshine it's hard to bring myself to phone the log man to ask for a delivery of 12 cubic metres of logs for the winter. But if I leave it until we actually need it he won't have any - or it'll be sopping wet and impossible to heave into neat stacks. Both Ali and I look forward to winters here. I can't say I felt the same when I lived in England. I love the crisp chill that puts a spring in your step, the bright sunny days that mean you can work outside, even if you have to wear a thick jumper. I'm looking forward to days cool enough to tidy up the garden, giving everything a haircut that will last the winter. Everything smells different as September rolls past. The air fills with the scent of smoke from wood-burners stuffed with fruit woods and oak.

But before then the air will be infused with the sharp smells of grape juice running through the streets. Small tractors will hurry along towing great trailers heaped with grapes, small blackboards on the back marked with the variety of grape. They'll deposit a trail of juice which will leave us in no doubt about how this region earns its keep. As one drives along towards Pezenas great draughts of wine-perfume blast out from the Cave Cooperative and Domaine Bourdic and the Chartreuse de Mougeres and Domaine de Montpeyrat and Chateau Fondouce - and all the other thousands of wine producers here in the Languedoc.

And the great thing is, it just happens.

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Well, we've just about recovered from the headiness of the Roujan annual fête. This comprises four nights of live music at the open space by the football ground, lots of big tables with hundreds of people scoffing moules frites, wine tastings, boules tournaments and the smallest parade in the history of carnivals. Four floats, one and a half papier-maché hedgehogs and the Joyeuses Minettes de Roujan.

The latter is a troupe of short blokes (except one) who wear wigs, short white skirts, bloomers, hats and falsies who dance about being majorettes. Their claim to fame is that, in their 26 years of formation, they've never had a rehearsal. The result is very funny. The one tall bloke is my brother. We worry for him.

 

 

 

Guests from Le Couvent drag themselves from the pool for the four and a half minutes it takes the carnival procession to pass.

 

Only to have stuff chucked at them by evil-looking small boys.

 

 

And a very jolly clown.

 

 

Everyday gear for this tractor-driving vigneron.

 

 

 

The town totemic animal is a hedgehog. If your french is up to it, here's an explanation: La légende du Hérisson « Lou Roumégaïre »

La tradition et la légende rapporte que, lancée à la poursuite de la Tarasque, qui semait la terreur dans la Basse Vallée du Rhône, Sainte Marthe, Patronne de la paroisse dépêcha à l'encontre de l'animal sanguinaire, une armée de hérissons dont la mission consistait à défendre la cité contre toute agression extérieure.

Mais le monstre ne fut pas au rendez-vous. De ce fait l'armée des vaillants insectivores fut autorisée à prendre ses quartiers d'hiver. Pourtant un hérisson demeura dans sa place. Il y fut nourri, choyé, adopté jusqu'à sa mort.

Depuis ce temps, cet animal totemique est devenu le symbole légendaire de la protection de la ville de Roujan contre toute attaque venue du dehors.

 

 

So now local Roujan muscle carries this big and very heavy hedgehog through the streets, lurching hither and thither fuelled by white wine, scaring onlookers.

 

 

Not to be outdone, some younger Roujan boys have made a second, smaller, version.

 

 

The boules tournament with all the local chaps showing off their boule skills and beautiful legs. What is it about men who are completely used to wearing shorts all the time - why are their legs so much more good-looking than Englishmens'?

 

 

Five peach trees at Chateau Mal Au Dos bore fruit this year, despite having been neglected for the past three years. This week we picked the last of them and made some delicious peach jam.

 

 

And, just for a change, we went strolling about in our vineyards with a fine glass of the new wine from the Cave Cooperative in Neffies which is a beautiful and complex red - called Hadrien. We're sporting small pockets in which one can carry a glass of wine while scoffing canapés and shaking hands in greeting (or kissing if you're here in France).

 

 

Meanwhile we are happy to see that our cinsault vines are coming along nicely. I'm slightly anxious, though, having bought a couple of wine fermentation tanks ready for our first own-production. They're currently near Orléans in Northern France and I can't find anyone to get them here. Transporters say they're too small and the post-type business says they're too big. Surely there's someone who can shift two tanks 1.3m wide by 1.8 metres high - made of fibre-glass and weighing next to nothing. We have just four weeks to get them here. Help!!!

 

 

 

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If you're free in February 2009 and you fancy a heap of hard work in exchange for free bed and board, we're running two Volunteer Weeks . We haven't done this before, but we have had some wildly successful volunteer weekends and now that we're in danger of using up the goodwill of our friends we're hoping to spread the net a little wider. Our friends tell us they have loved the weekends, so we hope you would too.  If you're interested follow the Volunteer link on the menu at the top of this page, or click here .

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Whoops - I've kept you waiting. Sorry. Glad you're back though. So four days ago the Tour de France chose to gallop through Roujan again after a 50 year break. And what fun we had.

Two of our poor guests had to leave early on the day of the tour to avoid closed roads and traffic jams. This was particularly rotten luck since one of them had broken her foot whilst here and had the 24 hour journey back to Western Australia to do encased in plaster. Hope you got home safely John & Julia - sorry you missed Le Tour. Maybe the whole of Roujan should be protected thus:

The fun starts some two hours before the actual cyclists show up, when a cavalcade of advertising vehicles rattle past lobbing freebies at leaping spectators. Grown adults diving like Grobelaar to rob tiny children of the fourth peaked cap or a triangle of cheese. Some of the vehicles are spectacular, like this one on top of a car.

Some aren't quite what they claim to be - for instance - what's eco about driving the whole of France in a big square box on wheels?

 

This poor women spent her entire time trying to avoid being decapitated by overhanging trees.

Whilst this chap looked none too enamoured to be spending half of July sitting in a cup of coffee. A career in PR anyone?

Mme Mas came out onto her balcony to wave, sporting a very appropriate and fetching Nike cap.

 Ali made sure we got our own bit of marketing in.

Our lovely French neighbour brought us out a plate of delicious stuff to stave off hunger (we were none too successful at catching the cheese triangles).

 Nicola & Ali bought silly hats.

And eventually the cyclists came in a sweep and a whoosh. All very exciting. We shouted for them to thow us drugs, but they seemed to have kept them all for themselves. Hey ho, you can only ask.

  

 So we all had a silly, noisy, friendly and lovely time. Wish you'd been here.

 Thanks Tour de France - see you in 2058.

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Sunday 1 June, Château de Margon (next village from Roujan) Open Day. Not only will the wonderful formal gardens of the Château be open, you'll be able to see another photographic exhibition by rising star 14-year-old Poppy Eady-Gosling. Here are some examples of her work. If you miss this occasion her work moves to Le Grand Café in Roujan for the month of June, where photographs will also be available to buy.

Venez nombreux!

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 So what are you doing on July 18th? We're going to be watching the whole Tour de France carnival pass by the end of our road. That's right, just 20m from the Le Couvent gates at 12.45 the Tour 2008 caravane will roar past. Described on the Le Tour website as:

* A 20 km-long procession
* 200 brightly decorated vehicles
* 43 brands represented on average each year
* 15 million gifts distributed
* 45 minutes of rolling entertainment

and that's before the cyclists come. I've seen the Tour three times before, and despite all the brouhaha about drugs, I am reduced to tears by the sheer power and determination of the cyclists as they hurtle past like a blast of wind. I hate the drugs thing, but I love to see athletes reaching their zenith.

So if you're free we have a couple of rooms still available. How about it?

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Fresh from Australia via Paris, new guests arrived yesterday.  They're on their honeymoon and over a glass or two of Le Couvent rosé they were telling us of their short but magical time in Paris. In particular they'd been impressed by the wonderful display of multi-coloured macaroons in Ladurée .

 

Yesterday morning, by absolute chance, I had skidded into one of the two Roujan baker's seconds before they closed and bought up the last of their special of the day. What was it? Yes, a pretty box full of colourful macaroons hand-made by the baker that morning. So, as I presented the plate to our guests I looked like the most accomplished magician ever to have lived.

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Just occasionally something completely unexpected happens in Roujan and it happened again last night. We got to witness an amazing cultural event way beyond that that you'd expect in a small village in deepest Languedoc..

Thanks to our friends Anne & Fran at La Maison Verte over the road we went to a fantastic concert in the church, just 150 metres away. Anne & Fran had heard that a choir of fifty girls from Hungary would be on their way to Spain to take part in a competition. La Maison Verte is huge so A&F invited the choir to spend a stopover night there. In exchange the girls gave a free concert, despite having spent 26 hours in a coach and arriving in Roujan a mere 3.5 hours before the event.

Wow, but were they good. They were extraordinary. Here's a video that does them no favours visually, but will give you a flavour of them. This piece is a bit frivolous in comparison with some of the beautiful Renaissance music they treated us to last night. I doubt there was a single person in the audience who didn't have shiny eyes and a skin tingle. Thank you Pro Musica from Nyíregháza in Hungary . Hála. Szerencse a versenyben.

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Damn, damn, damn. We lost, outright, no messing about with second rounds, we just lost. So we have the old Maire and his team for another six years. I console myself with the thought that we chose to live in Roujan because it felt like Britain in the 50's and with a bit of luck some things might remain that way if the villagers are so entrenched.

The main problem for me is the proposal to build a big supermarket in the village.  Roujan has two fantastic butchers, two excellent bakers, two general stores, a post office, a bank (albeit with mercurial opening hours), a bus into Pezenas twice a day, two bars, a florist, a pharmacy, heaps of estate agents, two hairdressers, two newspaper/tobacconists and so on. But the villagers are super keen for a new supermarket to be built on the outskirts of the Roujan.

Having lived through the demise of the English village we encourage them to imagine how our lives will all be when one-by-one the shops disappear and we all have to traipse nearly a kilometre down to the supermarket to drag our shopping another kilometre back up the hill. Either that or get the car out all the time. Unfortunately the rosy glow that sits over the village leads the villagers to believe that the independent shops will all remain. Now that would be a first.

 

 

 

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Today we voted in the municipal elections for the first time. It's a simple affair. One is handed a blue envelope. On the table are two lists of 19 candidates. You choose the list you want to vote for and stick it in the envelope, or if you want to choose some from each list you can go into a booth to make your choices. We were both happy with one of the lists so into the envelopes they went. Then a short queue before handing in your voting card to be stamped, the envelope hovers over the open ballot box and you sign to say you've voted and an important person slides a lever to let your vote fall into the box. All very civilised. Here's Ali placing her vote.

 And me outside the Mairie after having voted. Yes my face is all puffy because I STILL have this bloody cold and cough. 

 

 

I'll let you know how we got on tomorrow. I'm praying our party ousts the current Maire and his gang. The contenders have great plans which include a festival and a market in the village - both of which I would love.

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First a new roundabout appeared at the Pezenas end of the village, by the Cave Cooperative, last summer. It was pretty ugly, and well, just round. Then another popped up at the other end of town on the road to Gabian - slightly prettier this time, with lots of decoration in the middle - as is usual for French roundabouts. As if that wasn't enough new pavements and a squillion laurier roses found their way along the road to Neffies - Avenue Henri Mas.

At the end of the summer all the pavements were torn up, heavy machinery caused chaos in the main road, traffic was diverted round various routes (one of which saw pantechnicons wedged on the sharp bend by the bank) all of which were fairly disastrous and nearly caused the local garde champetre a heart attack. No two days saw the same road diversions as each 'plan' was as flawed as the next.

Then just before Christmas the first roundabout had lots of new planting and interesting stonework installed to end its summer-long building-site look.

The reason for this flurry of activity? Yes, the municipal elections. Every six years towns elect a new council and mayor. So they hang around doing nothing obvious for five years then make major changes in the sixth year. We're about to start voting on 9 March (it's a dual-pronged process) so Monsieur le Maire recently sent to every household a newsletter giving details of all the major achievements of the council. Just to remind us.

Anyway, for those of you who've stayed at Le Couvent, Roujan before, we hope you like the changes. Just watch out for the axle-high speed bumps all the way up the main street. Oh and we're not alone, the same phenomenon can be seen in all the towns and villages around here - and probably throughout France.

It'll be a relief when the elections are over, then we can all go back to sleep.

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M. Lafitte arrived this morning with a thousand litres of oil for the central heating. Every time he comes he whinges about the Banksia rose scraping the top of his lorry. He is clearly very stressed by having to negotiate his truck up our steep and narrow drive and takes it out on the rose. This outburst usually lasts until I've written the cheque at which point he becomes positively chirpy. I've become fond of him.

 

 

 

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When we first arrived here some five years ago the wine made at the cave co-operative in Roujan turned your tongue blue after the first glass. Things have improved enormously and the wines are becoming drinkable. The labelling is still awful, sporting the Roujan hedgehog - a design so particular that it has to have been created by someone closely related to the maire.

I found this bottle on e-bay. The whole label is a pastiche - it's brilliant. Maybe they'd sell more if they used this design.

 

 

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For the past five years Ali and I have been part of a group of Roujanaises who meet to help local French, Swiss and Dutch women speak a bit more English. It is always huge fun.

 

 

Each time we meet in a different house - there're around a dozen of us. Today, after having spent an achy afternoon pruning vines, we met at lovely Sally & Paul's house. Sal was the headteacher in a primary school. As a result she always plans loads of fun things to do. Tonight was no exception. We spent an hour listening to, then watching a TV chef prepare a luscious-sounding orange and chocolate cheesecake.

 

 

A long list of new words and much concentration later, the group had the hang of the recipe and method. Just as we thought the lesson was over Sally, with a flourish, whipped out 'one she'd prepared earlier'.

 

 

And truly delicious it was. Now why wasn't school like that?

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