On the 28th August, I left the straw house to head to my final stop; a homestead further east. Lulu followed me hopefully up the driveway with a stick, but decided I was a lost cause as I loaded my rucksack into the boot of Cecile’s car and myself into the passenger’s seat. We were heading into town where I would be catching the bus to Toulouse. En route Cecile promised to send over her recipe for vinaigrette and wished me a bonne voyage before dropping me off. The town had an artisan Boulangerie that also doubled as a patisserie, so I took the opportunity to buy a pain au chocolat. In France, the best boulangeries were always l’artisan, meaning that the dough was prepared by hand every day as opposed to being bought in from a central supplier. A useful nugget I had picked up during my time in the South was that “Pain au Chocolat” is a term used only in Northern France and abroad, whilst the people of Southern France insist on saying “chocolatine”. Some boulangeries would go as far as baking bread with chocolate added as a ploy to sell something legitimately called “bread with chocolate”. Stocked up with pastries, I crossed the empty square to sit at a cafe/bar to use the free wifi before my bus arrived. The cafe was occupied by a few old men, mainly focussed around one group arguing loudly over coffee whilst a horse race played on a wall mounted TV. Another man was sat in the corner reading a newspaper with a glass of wine, and a waitress bustled around welcoming newcomers.
The bus eventually arrived (five minutes early, not uncommon in France) and took me to Toulouse where I then caught a train out of the city. I arrived fifteen minutes later expecting to meet my new host, Sandrine, who pulled up twenty minutes later in yet another Renault; this one a sky blue, electric hatchback. With her was Claude, a tall, middle-aged man with enormous ears who moved to the backseat for the short journey to the farm. We stopped off at an organic food store on the way to buy some overpriced produce so, while Sandrine perused the coffee aisle, I got to know Claude, who spoke in monotone French and gave me a frantically uninteresting lecture on organic wine.
We continued to the house shortly after, which was surrounded by fields just off a fast country road. The house was built in the style of the region with pink hued bricks and a traditional tile roof, the shutters painted coquille d’œuf (eggshell) instead of Toulousian blue. A huge pea plant grew decoratively over the front door, and round the side of the house a prune tree spilled fruit over the driveway like a sea of golden ping pong balls. At the back, an overgrown hillside garden crisscrossed with footpaths tumbled away from the veranda and down into a huddle of trees.
Things were slightly bizarre at Sandrine’s farm. The garden was poorly maintained, and all the vegetable beds had been left to grow wild with burdock and other weeds supposedly in a ‘permaculture-spirit’. Two hens roamed around freely, one of whom was gender confused and would cock-a-doodle every morning. Besides the prune tree and a fig tree by the road, the property didn’t produce anything except tomatoes and the occasional aubergine. Sandrine spent her days at work, either remotely or onsite, leaving her with little time or energy for the garden, which had decided to do it’s own thing in her absence. She also had four children ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-seven who all regularly stayed at the house and had little interest in the garden. I met them during my stay, including the youngest, Matthieu. One evening as we ate dinner on the veranda, a hornet (frelon) appeared and swooped around the table. This was a regular occurrence in the South of France, best resolved by getting out the way until the hornet lost interest or, as Jeff had demonstrated back at Bel Ebat, crushing it neatly beneath a tub of ice cream. Matthieu had different ideas however, and instead wrapped a tea towel around his hand and attempted punch the hornet as it buzzed around. Collecting dirty plates yet again proved to be an excellent exit strategy, so I fled to the kitchen with the other family members and Claude not far behind.
On the second day, we began clearing away burdock to free up the soil for mulching ahead of next years planting. One of the best parts of living and working in rural France was how the work day became linked with the rhythm of nature. It could be oppressively hot in the afternoon, a time that was reserved for eating and resting, so the day was best started at sunrise when the temperature was cool and the mosquitoes were still asleep. Having lived this way for almost three months, I had become fairly well synchronised with the rise and fall of the sun. As such, I was in the garden at 8am. Sandrine had confidently assured me the evening before that she would be up and ready at this time, too. Well versed in French schedules by this point, I wasn’t surprised when she turned up at 9:30 and started making coffee and toast. At 10:15 she was ready to go, and got busy searching for things on the veranda whilst I worked on the garden. Many things needed finding, and Sandrine valiantly pursued each one, narrating her thoughts to me down in the garden as she went. After a couple of hours of this she was tired and I had finished clearing the burdock, so we stopped for lunch.
As this was my last stop, I decided to focus on practicing French; self-sufficiency skills were an unlikely ask. As luck would have it, Sandrine had a tenant, Hugo, who was from Ecuador but spoke excellent French and only intermediate level English. He was the perfect practice partner, and talked only in French for my whole visit, stopping occasionally to patiently explain a word or phrase. He recommended some French films, including the hilarious OSS 117; a French comedy spinoff of James Bond. He also played guitar very well and taught me some pieces of his own composition, further reinforcing my growing sense that guitar was the instrument of choice for any committed traveller.
After some confusion about Claude’s exact purpose, I discovered that he was Sandrine’s boyfriend and was staying at the house for a week before returning to his hometown near Nice. Nevertheless he also proved to be a willing practice partner and helped me correct some French bullet points I had written about the days events. Sandrine later explained that he was dyslexic and wasn’t giving particularly good corrections, so we stopped the exercise after a couple of days.
Another character appeared on my last day, and older guy named Jean-René. He had started his career as an engineer then became extremely wealthy running a tech company that provided software for energy companies. He breezed up the driveway in a black 1961 Porsche and parked dangerously close to the prune tree. Sandrine introduced us and we had a long chat during which he informed me that he was an acquaintance of Jeremy Cornyn and a friend of Jean Lucy Mélanchon, the former third place runner up for the French presidency. Mélanchon represented the socialist party and, true to the stereotype, Jean-René spoke at length about the importance of reforming the economic system. Every time he said the word ‘profit’ (we spoke in English), his Porsche seemed to gleam a little brighter. I didn’t manage to get a ride in the Porsche, but Jean’s arrival nicely broke up the routine of weeding and picking figs.
Life at Sandrine’s was peaceful, but not at all like my previous stops in rural France. It was a house in a commuter village, and despite being big and surrounded by open space, life for the occupants revolved around work in the city. At previous stops, the pace of the day was defined by nature, whereas Sandrine’s home functioned as a place to sleep and eat after a day in the office. The garden existed as a hopeful link to a world of self-sufficiency and time outdoors, but most of it’s produce ended up being taken into the office to share with colleagues. We ate good food, but it wasn’t carefully prepared because it wasn’t necessary fuel after a day spent working outdoors, and meals weren’t an opportunity to sit down together for a proper break because, after a morning of meetings, more people were the last thing Sandrine needed. It was a life in the suburbs that dreamed of life in the countryside.
