When we arrived at Frasquenet Isabelle was just finishing up her weekly cleaning session and informed me that the previous guests had left about four hours earlier. I unpacked the car while Sarah rushed to her room to re-acquaint herself with long forgotten toys. Jane headed down to the shops to stock up with groceries.
This year we had decided to stay for just two weeks, so the projects I had set myself were more modest than usual.
The more mundane of the two tasks was to be the replacement of the rotting wood at the bottom of the outer front door. The other apparently even less arduous task would be to dispose of the tub of Irises, which had stood in the courtyard ever since we had bought the house.
The Iris tub, was in fact one half of a wooden wine barrel. From its condition I would surmise that it had been standing there for at least ten years before we moved in. The metal bands had rusted badly and only just held together the ring of rotten, beetle infested wood, which in turn contained the soil.
I set about this second task within ten minutes of arriving, expecting to spend no more than half an hour, to bag up and dispose of the tub and its contents. With each passing year, the amount of soil spilling from the disintegrating barrel onto the courtyard floor was increasing. The resultant frequent sweeping would have been tolerable, except that the Irises had always finished blooming by the time our summer holidays arrived.
Every year we had gazed at the decrepit barrel filled with drooping leaves, which had turned brown at the edges. Each time I had said, “We’ll have to replace that with something more attractive sometime”. Now “sometime” had come.
Within 5 minutes the barrel was in one of the black bin liners, which I had brought with me from the UK for this specific purpose. Now in front of me stood a hard block of solid dry clay, which had somehow sustained the Irises. Armed with a club hammer, dustpan and brush, I eventually disposed of this unsightly lump in just under four hours of hard labour.
I managed to keep refreshed by drinking several cans of San Miguel lager. It seemed that as fast as I could pour San Miguel into my mouth, a similar volume of perspiration would seep out of my pores, leaving me soaked and dripping.
The next morning on Sunday, Isabelle appeared again. House cleaning dates for the summer were exchanged, as were mutual invitations for dinner. Isabelle graciously accepted my gift of Iris bulbs.
We were to be on our own for the first week of the holiday, but were expecting visitors to arrive on the Tuesday of the second week. Since receiving visitors had become synonymous with visiting Carcassonne and the other well known attractions of the area we decided to spend most of the afternoons of the first week on the beach.
A visit to the market in Narbonne resulted in me purchasing a weeks supply of the pepper encrusted sausage, which had gone down so well during the picnic at Montsegur in the spring. This time I also bought some similar sausage but instead of being pepper encrusted it was herb encrusted, this also turned out to be delicious.
With the barrel of Irises now gone, I felt the courtyard needed some new plant life to give it a Mediterranean atmosphere.
I measured up the front door and estimated what wood and screws I would need to buy, to fix it. I soon realised that fixing it would not be difficult, but the trick would be to stop it from rotting again. I had figured out that the reason for the rot was the water sprayers, which clean the streets of southern French villages in the early morning hours of several days each week. The cleaning is a very necessary service, but has this one downside.
I noticed that several neighbours had screwed sheets of thin steel to the bottom of their front doors, apparently for this very purpose. But all of these had been in turn afflicted with rust, which in some cases had corroded so much, that there were holes right through the steel, and so they were no longer effective.
I drew up my new shopping list. Wood, screws, wood preserving fluid, a sheet of aluminium alloy, more screws to fix it with, paint, plants, soil, and pots.
I then spent several mornings driving around local builder’s merchants and garden centres looking for the listed items.
Obtaining, the door mending materials was straight forward, but buying the plants and suitable containers, was more a case of seeing what was available and hoping something would be inspiring.
After much soul searching and debate with Jane, I decided to buy two very large imitation plastic terracotta plant pots. This no doubt sounds more than a little naff to many people. I certainly felt I should think it was naff, but having seriously considered the more socially acceptable alternative, real terracotta pots, it seemed that plastic was the one and only sensible option.
When you visit your holiday home for only three to four weeks a year, and it’s in a hot climate and you rent it out to others, you have to be practical. Having already put artificial plants inside the house previously, I didn’t feel too bad about putting artificial terracotta outside it.
On the negative side, plastic does not age as naturally as terracotta and as already mentioned, there are those who would regard it as lacking a certain finesse. On the positive side, plastic is light to carry, it retains moisture, it won’t crack when accidentally kicked and it is relatively cheap.
I wanted to create an atmosphere reminiscent of my childhood holidays spent in Grasse. These memories had become almost inextricably interwoven with another holiday which had been spent in Majorca. I recalled palm lined roads in Nice, picking oranges and lemons from trees by the roadside in Soller and there being swathes of brilliant red flowering bushes in both places.
There was any number of apparently suitable plants available at the garden centres of Narbonne and surrounding villages. There was also a large number of unsuitable ones.
I quickly rejected the arrowroot. Although ideal for the atmosphere I wanted to create, I had fallen foul of it, several times previously. The sharp points, which make up the tips of the long upward pointing fleshy leaves, can be extremely harmful to inquisitive or excessively energetic children. In addition, they pose no minor threat to inebriated adults.
The palm trees got me very excited, until I saw the price tags on the tiny ones, which had only just emerged from their coconuts. Had they looked a little greener, I might have been tempted to part with the exorbitant number of French francs required. However the ones on offer looked like they had a poor chance of survival, in fact they looked as though they had already moved on, to the tropical plant paradise in the sky.
Eventually I purchased a lime tree and on Jane’s advice, a red Oleander. I was sure I had got one up on Jane here, the lime tree was sprouting three healthy looking limes, while the spindly Oleander was already drooping and dropping its few miserable shrivelled up flowers.
Bags of expensive soil from the garden centre were emptied into the plastic pots and the plants bedded in. To help contain the moisture in the peaty soil, I poured a layer of clay dust rescued from the Iris tub onto the surface. Once this was watered it dried to form an almost impervious crust. The result was not attractive.
Another trip to the garden centres provided some bags of aquarium gravel, which I poured onto the clay, creating a much more visually acceptable surface. Although the overall effect was now quite pleasing, something still seemed to be lacking.
After yet further trips to the garden centres I planted some rock cacti in the gravel beneath the plants. The courtyard was now at long last looking quite Mediterranean.
At dinner the next night Isabelle and Daniel informed me that unless taken indoors over winter, the lime tree would perish, but not to worry, because the Oleander would flourish. It seemed that Jane’s plant sense was better honed than my own.
The decision to buy the plastic terracotta look alike pots seemed to be endorsed when Ron and Gertrude paid a fleeting visit with their children. They appeared suitably stunned that they were looking at plastic and not terracotta. Of course they may have been splitting their sides with mirth after their departure.
The days were now rolling by and I’d stopped keeping track of the date. I only became aware it was already our second Sunday in Frasquenet, when the church bells made it obvious.
The following day we went to La Francqui. The beach here is a little different to most of the other ones in the area and is my favourite. The village itself is generously endowed with pine trees along with their resulting fragrance. Although reminiscent of St. Tropez and Juan les Pins, the glitzy casinos and serious night clubs of the Cote D’Azure are a long way away. I hope it stays like that.
‘Are you sure Billy and Mary are coming tomorrow and not today’, I asked Jane as she rubbed sun block into her legs. It seemed inconceivable to me, that they would stay at home all weekend and then leave for their holidays on a Monday. Yes I’m sure she replied. After the short drive home, Sarah and Jane ascended the steps from the garage, while I locked the garage doors. ‘Hiya man, what are you doing here, You’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow…’. I couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but the few bits I could hear confirmed my thoughts that the Oriental mind is inscrutable.
Yin Su, is the daughter of Billy and his wife Mary. She is several years older than Sarah is. But Sarah adored her. She was wonderfully patient. Played all Sarah’s games with her and stayed very friendly despite Sarah attaching herself like a limpet and following her everywhere.
This was great for us adults. Billy, Mary and Yin Su only stayed with us for a couple of days before heading on to Spain. But on those days Sarah was very contented and we did not have to worry about entertaining her.
Billy is a Singaporean who made the UK his home. Mary is a Chinese Malaysian. They had known Jane for many years and we had attended many of their parties in London. They in turn had often came to our summer barbeques.
I seldom feel relaxed enough in other people’s homes to get completely sozzled. But Billy and Mary were an exception. Jane was always elected driver for the journey home from their parties. I am glad to say Billy returned the compliment. On at least one occasion I have helped him make it to the passenger seat of his car, so Mary could drive him home from one of our own gatherings.
Mary earns an income as an artist and as well as drawing or painting water colours she also illustrates children’s books. She would get up early and disappear with her sketchpad, returning a couple of hours later, as we were beginning to awake to the new day. She drew some nice sketches of Frasquenet and some of it’s streets during those two days.
Since Billy enjoys sinking a glass or two of wine as much as I do, we spent the evenings in a state of semi oblivion. The days were of course spent showing them our favourite local sites and beaches, but only after a massive coffee ingestion, to counter the effects of the previous night.
Billy, Mary and Yin Su comprise one of the most laid back, nicest families I have ever encountered and we were very sorry to say good bye when they departed on Thursday morning.
We only had two more days before our own departure and I had still not fixed the front door. After a light alcohol free lunch, I got out my circular saw and other tools.
The grooves in the screws holding the hinges in the door frame had disappeared under generations of paint layers. It took me a while with a hammer and chisel before they were clear enough for me to use the screwdriver. It then took me about ten minutes of careful study to decide where I was going to cut and how I was going to attach the new wood.
By 4:00pm the repaired and partly repainted door had been re-attached to it’s hinges. Standing back to admire my handy work I wondered what life would be like as a full time door repair man and shutter maker in the Languedoc.
We spent most of Friday on the beach at Narbonne plage. By now Sarah was a confident swimmer so we spent several hours splashing around in the sea.
On the way home from the beach to Frasquenet we stocked up on wine, cheese and pepper and herb coated sausage to take back to England along with some snacks to eat en route. Since we planned to leave early in the morning we popped round to say goodbye to Isabelle.
We then headed into the old part of Narbonne for our last restaurant meal of the holiday.
At 5:00am on Saturday I locked the barn door and we skimmed our way along the almost deserted roads, using the reverse route to the one we had come down on. Since it was early and we were heading North rather than South the road works on the plain at Larzac was no obstacle for us.
We caught the 6:00PM ferry from Calais and were back at home in London before midnight.
A few weeks later we held one of our summer barbeques. Guests included at least a dozen friends who had visited us at some point is time in Frasquenet. Mary presented us with a print of one of the scenes she’d sketched during their visit. Being sketched in black ink on white paper and being of street buildings rather than foliage, it looked a bit stark and wintry, but was clearly recognisable and much appreciated
As I downed my third fluffy duck, I reflected that while all our guests had appeared to have enjoyed themselves, not one of them had visited Frasquenet more than once.
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