As always, you can click the thumbnails to enlarge the pictures below. (Clicking the subsequent picture again shows it slightly larger.)

December 2006

January 2007

February 2007

March 2007

French bread, cheap wine, winter picnics, good food and a great food culture, fresh veg four times a week, great red peppers and the big market. Oh, and the plastic clothes drier(!)

We’re looking forward to:

Friends and family, Sam the dog, English beer, carpets for Luca to crawl and walk on, our garden, nice parks with swings, having an income.

We enjoyed:

Walks in the sun, walking round the little streets, speaking French and the kids speaking French, the time to be together, quality time with visitors, no pressure to go out in the evenings.

We will enjoy:

Going out in the evenings, speaking English, the ease of getting to know people nearby, having a niche, pubs and having things to do in bad weather.

It will be sad to leave:

The light, the Mont d’Or, the Med and the Alps.

It will be great to have:

A cot for Luca, a washing machine in the kitchen and a modern heating system with a timer.

Mat went out to the boulangerie on Monday and was amused to find our car stranded between two ‘road closed’ signs.

Most of our list of aims are in the ‘What?’ page (link at the top and on the right).

1. Speaking French
   We’ve done plenty of this. Do you know that the French for a ladder is the same as the French for the scale of a map? I do.
2. Eat olives, drink wine and generally rest and recuperate
   Yes, yes and yes. Well, duh!
3. Teaching the kids to swim
   We’ve been taking the kids to bébés nageurs every Saturday morning and they love it. They can’t swim unaided, but love to kick about in the deep end with a float and a dozen bath toys each.
4. Writing a book
   I’ve been doing some writing. There’s the novel (of which I’ve written about 15,000 words, all of them crap), the screenplay (which I started this week) and a few short story ideas that I’ve jotted down. At this rate I predict that I’ll be bothering publishers in about 2010, which, co-incidentally, is when the screenplay is set.
   Meanwhile, Becky has written a couple of magazine articles and has started researching target publications for the latest one. It’s bound to sell, because it’s really good.
5. Learning about urban regeneration
   Becky has used some of her time off from the kids to research different approaches to urban regeneration in France. A slight disappointment is that she hasn’t managed to visit or volunteer with actual projects (time ran out) but she’s learnt a lot from the web.
6. Creative things
   We started well, making most of our Christmas presents out of papier maché. Of course, after the initial enthusiasm we fizzled out, so that now I’ve got a mannekin’s head and torso and some plastic legs to bring home next month. On the other hand, Cara and Theo are still going strong and have produced a dozen greetings cards each, an animal A-Z frieze, several letters, exercise books full of sketches and some collages.
7. Become a guitar maestro
   I’ve been working really hard at this. Only time will tell.
8. Earn some money
   On this front we’ve drawn zip. Unemployment in France is running at about 10%, and in Manosque it is even higher – about 13%. At the labour exchange they told us we should just turn up regularly and hassle them for work, but we didn’t think it fair. So, tomorrow, when we pick up Caroline, Mat and the kids from Aix-en-Provence, we’re going to try our hand at busking. With any luck we’ll make enough money to pay for the petrol to get us home again.

From Becky: Looking for Work: I’ve been promising for ages to do a post about looking for work. Jasper’s got here first, so I’ll fill in a bit. It’s been a revelation to me looking for work in a high-unemployment area. Being used to Alton and Oxford, where there was always a choice of casual work during student holidays, I said blithely ‘Oh, we’ll just do some olive picking, or maybe bar work’. When it became clear that olives are picked by farmers and drinks served by professional waiters, I resigned myself to signing up with a temping agency to work on production lines. It would be interesting – we’d meet some ‘real’ people. We filled in reams of paperwork, produced CVs in French, attached photos and supporting paperwork, asked neighbours to check our French, took advice on how best to present ourselves (‘Don’t mention your previous salaries, whatever you do. We don’t do that in France – you get the job, THEN negotiate the salary’). Ten days after submitting the paperwork I went into the temping agency and was told to put my name on that day’s list and they’d call if any work came in, but they warned that it wasn’t very likely. There were already about 15 names above mine on the list, all saying ‘will consider anything’. It was 9.30 a.m. We’ve also looked on every possible noticeboard and in the papers. The jobs page of the local paper consists of about 3 adverts for highly-skilled posts, and a couple of columns of people looking for work.

The noticeboards are full of people offering childcare, ironing and, yes, English lessons. My little ads joined them, but only once did I see one with a little phone-number strip torn off it. It was at the family centre. I told Jasper excitedly when I got home, and he admitted, shame-faced, that he’d torn it off himself to make it look as if there was some interest. I’ve only ever seen one poster offering work here (they’re in every shop window in Oxford). It was in a newspaper office, asking for delivery drivers. I asked at the counter, and was told huffily ‘It’s nothing to do with us - it’s an independent agency. Ring the number on the poster’. I took down the numbers and rang both, several times. One gave a fax tone; the other said it was unavailable. So we gave up. It’s been wonderful not having to work for six months, and I’ve certainly gained some respect for unemployed people in high-unemployment areas. We’re clearer than ever that we live in an extremely priviledged area of Britain, and if we ever want to go travelling again, we’ll think hard about arranging work before we set off.

It’s as though they’ve been hibernating and now, just as our thoughts are beginning to turn to Oxford, the rest of Manosque’s population is rubbing its collective eyes and stretching, ready for a long, hot summer.

I don’t know whether she’s waiting for a hot date or just touting for business. 

‘Course, when I were a lad all this was fields’

Knit one, perl one

Aww – innit sweet?

To be continued…

Our second day brought to my attention the fact that you need damn good leg muscles to stay here. No wonder Becky and Jasper look so fit – going up and down a spiral staircase a dozen times a day does wonders for the gluteus maximus and my calf muscles feel like I’ve been down the gym.

After getting the kids breakfast in communal bedlam we took off up the Mont D’or behind us. Cara, Theo and Ruari zig-zagged their way up collecting sticks, pine cones and needing carries. The views over the main valley were stunning and you could clearly see the circle of Old Manosque below, nestled amongst 30-odd years of building sprawl. The path got pretty rough towards the end and when Jasper suggested a short cut(!) we blithely took it – going straight up through terraced olives and wooden steps to the top where an old tower stood.

Ruari loved it – hills are really his thing just like they are Tom’s. He and Theo sat down under an Olive tree and right away started chucking grass at each other laughing their heads off. We adults wanted to see the views but the kids preferred stuff they could get their hands on. Early in the walk Jasper found a cricket and we also saw yellow swallowtail-like butterflies and orange and brown spotted ones. The way down was a pushchair race away – Jasper and Tom raced the pushchairs and Becky and I held our breaths.

That evening Tom and I wandered through the old town and out of an archway to the nearest open bar – le Glacier. It was full of Manosque Goth teens – sprawled smoking in a corner. The barman was friendly but like we’d been warned Manosque pretty much closes down after 7 pm. Le Glacier was clearly the most rocking place in town for the evening (not). I figure most teens get to 18 or so and then leave.

Today we drove to Avignon. It’s about an hour or so away through a pass onto the plain that runs next to the Luberon Mountains. Provencal drivers cannot resist overtaking anyone who leaves a space in front of themselves and the next car. They play dodgems around any slow vehicles; not seeming to care about blind corners, lorries or their own lives. Luckily for us we just had to follow Jasper and Becky and not try to figure out the way as well as dodge the traffic. It was a beautiful ride with rolling wooded hills all the way to our left and sightings of herons to spice it up. Ubiquitous plane tree-lined avenues often occurred. The dry bright air reflected back off these light coloured mottled trees making them often hypnotic to watch. Apparently these tree avenues are known accident traps as drivers falling under their spell can get so distracted as to crash. Hence also apparently the needs for yellow diamond road signs – presumably meant to flash at you in time to snap you out of it.

Avignon is the only town I’ve ever seen that’s still entirely enclosed by its own medieval town wall, complete with turreted towers above the 6 or 7 ‘poternes’ (postern gates) with room for military patrols on top. It’s amazing when you think about it and makes you think of how much stability, aka money and power, was needed to preserve it like that down the centuries. We walked the kids in under the Lazare Postern gate and into narrow cobbled streets leading to the papal palace. The palace is atop a hill and decorated with a lovely walled garden and its own carp pool/grotto. The kids loved the playground – especially the see saw. But what they really liked was walking on top of the low walls where they found a basking lizard and a whopper bumble bee that looked like it had been to the armourers to get kitted out in shiny cool ‘f-off’ black, just to impress us.

The papal palace was built in the typical grey stone of the region but crowned by a huge golden statue of the Virgin Mary. From the gardens, dominated by the virgin, there were clear views of all of Avignon with its rusty red tiled roofs and the river cushioning the town below. But by this time we were starrrrving – so bundling the kids into the pushchairs we descended the other side into the front of the palace where a wide cobbled square spread out below gradually terraced steps. On into town past stalls of paintings and jewellery to a long row of cafes. Perfect. Ruari chased the pigeons ( ‘I scared them’) a lot. After lunch Cara and Theo got to go on a gorgeously painted carousel with Becky. (Ruari was too nervous but he waved). Tonight Jasper is cooking a massive saucepan of local mussels, with pommes frites of course. Life could not get better.

I’m amazed it’s already half-way through the week and we’ve only got 2 more full days left. Oh well. Time enough to have at least one more lovely walk and consume even more gorgeous food and wine.

It’s a beautiful drive all along the north side of the Luberon mountains (Peter Mayle country), and Avignon is a great city. You could easily fill several days there – we didn’t even start on the art galleries, boat trips or nearby vineyards (Chateauneuf du Pape being the most famous). But we did take a tour of the enormous and impressive Popes’ Palace, climb many steps for views across the city towards the mountains and try many lipsticks in Sephora, a renowned (according to Shami) makeup shop.

We also had a good Moroccan meal and sipped coffees in trendy pavement cafés, though not on the pavement as the mistral wind made it really chilly. We got back to our hotel after midnight – several hours after my bedtime - and I still managed a Baileys at the bar!

When we got home, the kitchen was tidy, there were flowers on the table, Luca had 2½ new teeth and Dave was teaching him to clap. I’ll have to start planning my next trip.

It was just as well that Becky had done all the organising. At the car boot sale I realised that I’d forgotten my coat. And hat, and scarf. I didn’t fancy the prospect of skiing in a teeshirt, so it was lucky that I found a skiing jacket for €5. Nick bought a Marseilles street sign and I got two pairs of plastic skis for the kids.

And then the skiing was fantastic! Apart from some mist on day two, the conditions were good and we all had lots of fun. I bought a silly hat, Nick and Dave got themselves some souvenirs, and we bombed down the slopes as quickly and elegantly as anyone.

Dave and I now have the dubious pleasure of looking after the kids while Becky and Shami go on an overnight jolly to Avignon. It’s just as well the kids love their plastic skis; maybe we’ll go back towards the snow…