Le Couvent doesn't open in the winter. Not ever, never. However we make two exceptions - one week for our volunteers and another for a wonderful group of writers who come here each March. They are all members of the Tricycle Theatre Black & Asian Writers' Goup and the week is sponsored by generous Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York.
All twelve of them have a lively breakfast round the kitchen table, then as soon as we've cleared up, the table is festooned with wires and laptops. Apart from the clackety clack of all the keyboards, you can hear a pin drop. Occasionally someone will get up to put the kettle on. Roy stands up to think. A couple prefer to write in their rooms and one likes to write in Mother Sup's, whilst going through our music collection. So far this afternoon I've heard Gorecki, Madame Butterfly and a bit of Nina Simone filter through to our apartment.
All this quietness makes Ali and I quiet too. I have spent much of today going through cadastral plans trying to work out which tiny piece of land we bought as an adjunct when we purchased our vines. No-one ever actually walked us round the boundaries, so we simply know that there's a small area somewhere en route to our vineyard which stands untended and neglected. I called a friend in the village who's married to a five generation Roujanais. I'm hoping he'll be able to tell me.
Were I not in silent mode I would be continuing my chipping of old wine barrel staves. I dismantled a beautiful oak barrel the other day and have been in the process of making signs for the vineyard. I'm hoping to do one for each parcel giving the name of the grape variety and when it was planted. I've done three so far, just five to go.
By the way, we are already fully booked for considerable chunks of the summer, so if you're dithering over when to come, tarry no longer or your dates might have been swallowed up. (See, I'm just picking up discarded words from the kitchen floor.)
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It looks really good.