Pomport – derrickjknight

The Owl And The Pussy Cat

In the small hours of the morning the shrill cry of an owl, seemingly immediately by my open window, disturbed my slumber. So far off as to be barely discernible came an answering call. A duet ensued. Suddenly all was quite outside. Straining my ears I could just hear the distant correspondent. Eventually both birds’ cries could be clearly distinguished in the middle distance. The notes changed. Merged. Reached a crescendo. Then silence. As I drifted back to sleep, faint echoes reverberated. I thought of Eartha Kitt, that personification of the sex-kitten chanteuse. Her rendition of ‘Let’s do it (let’s fall in love)’ was a hit in the 1950s and beyond. Anyone who doesn’t know the lyrics and their connection with my reverie should find the song on Youtube.

When the team arrived after I had risen from my bed, Sofiene stood looking concerned at his car. Benoit crawled underneath the front of it and pronounced the damage minimal and easily reparable. I quipped that he was always underneath something. First the bath, and now the car. The story could not have been invented. For about 100km over several days, a cat had been heard mewing under the bonnet. Despite several searches, nothing could be found. Until Sofiene realised that a neighbour’s small kitten was trapped inside. Despite every encouragement, it would not emerge. It was in a plastic casing near the engine. He had to break the plastic to free the animal. It would not budge. Realising it must be hungry he offered it a sandwich. It refused. Sofiene moved away. The kitten licked it with evident lassitude. Sofiene tapped the casing in order to persuade it to escape. Finally it did. Naturally, I told my friend the tale of the swan in the braking system.

Partially refreshed by light rain, I walked the steeply undulating Pomport loop. As I neared the village, Fred, no doubt on his way to the bar, waved to me from his scooter. The racket made by ducks on the lake below the D17 was drowned by the deafening roar of a jet plane that rent the skies above.

Vigorous vines bear ripening fruit.

I did find a signal up at Pomport, but, surprise, surprise, the best one to be had is outside number 30 rue St Jacques, a couple of hundred yards from my house, almost the lowest point in Sigoules.

This evening, Mike is due to collect me to take me for a meal in Eymet. I will report on that tomorrow.

Genealogy

With my coffee this morning I began reading another of Ann’s books, ‘Dear Dodie’, being Valerie Grove’s biography of the writer Dodie Smith.

I was grateful for the cool breeze offering relief from the strong sun occupying a clear blue sky as I began the long ascent up to Pomport to walk the loop that offers a much steeper descent from the plateau surrounding the village via a winding road past fields and through woods and back into Sigoules. I passed the ornamental garden in rue de La Mayade at 10.20 a.m. and arrived at number 6 on the stroke of midday when my outside thermometer read 24 degrees.

The landscape sparkled. An intrepid cyclist laboured past me up the slope. As always I spared a prayer for two Frenchmen when I passed their roadside monument. This time I scanned the village war memorial seeking their Christian names. There they were: Robert Siron and Gabriel Lamy, who had been shot by Germans, presumably at that spot, when I was just 21 months old. I had been more fortunate in the land and time of my birth. My own father survived his time in the British Army in France. Could these two men have otherwise been alive today?

The only other pedestrian I met was a woman pushing a buggy in which, dummy firmly esconced, lay a sleeping toddler. A light aircraft chugged and droned overhead. Butterflies fluttered by. A small rodent scuttled across last autumns dried fallen leaves. Sweetly sonorous birdsong accompanied the ubiquitous golden symphony of spring flowers, not yet eclipsed either by tall grasses and sprouting nettles or by the still knotty heavily pruned vines. Far off in the woods the melody was interrupted by a discordant clamour no doubt set up by parent birds to deter an egg-collecting magpie and drown its warning clatter. Fruit trees blossomed.

The now shallower streams glittered temptingly as I began to look forward to the refreshing glass of water I would extract from the kitchen tap on my return.

Having put Chris and Gay, two ardent genealogists, in touch with each other, I am now copied into their exchanges of e-mails. Gay, in Australia, has managed to provide my brother with documentation about the Knights that he did not have, and to discover that her daughter Holly and my son Sam each have antecedents hailing from villages four miles apart in Devon. I was delighted to be able to tell Sam’s mother-in-law, seeking information about Jean Knight, nee Hunter, that my nonagenarian mother is still very much alive. She will be able to answer any questions herself.

Today’s poem was ‘Ballade Des Dames Du Temps Jadis’ by Francois Villon (1431 -1465). It presented no problems.

Lunch was last week’s sausage casserole accompanied by a final glass of Sofiene’s gift of a superb Groupe Austoni Bariolees 2010 that Bill and I hadn’t finished a couple of nights ago after we’d polished off his Cotes du Rhone. Lemon sorbet was for afters.

Sunday in Sigoules offers a day without straining to hear and speak French. The birds were today’s relaxing companions.

A City Gent

Today was beautiful. Crisp. Frosty. And sunny. I began by wandering around the village roads then walking up the D17 towards Pomport. The donkey, grazing with the goats, gave me a cursory glance and continued his meal. He too must have grown accustomed to my presence. A birdfeeder had been filled along the way. Past the leisure centre on the way up towards Pomport I have often noticed a minor road descending the slope on the left. This morning, ignoring the sign proclaiming ‘no entry except for access’, I decided to take it. At worst I would have to retrace my steps. Passing through trees on either side, after an almost right-angled bend a long, winding, calf-stretching climb past several tracks leading to houses eventually brought me to a flat plain high above the fields below. Up there were the inevitable vineyards and, fortunately, a junction at which a right turn led to Pomport. I exchanged greetings with a jogger on this plateau, wondering whether he too would take an undulating route. I certainly wouldn’t have fancied running down the hill I had just climbed. I always found it easier to run up a steep slope than down it.

As I entered Pomport I encountered a large group of ramblers decanting from their cars and changing their outfits. They had all the right gear: walking boots, sticks, and protective clothing. They reminded me of Jessica togging up for one of her beloved Lakeland walks. In those days, when I did accompany her, I dressed more like a city gent. Although now I still sport a waistcoat and suit jacket when the weather requires more than a T-shirt and shorts, I do at least wear jeans and appropriate footwear.

Walking down the twisting and turning D17 back to Sigoules I felt the same sharp wind as yesterday. Obviously it was behind me on the way up, for I hadn’t noticed it.

Upon my return I cooked a sausage casserole. As it was made with ‘Rose de Sigoules’ (that’s rose as in the flower, not pink wine} 2009, I drank the rest of the bottle. I used a glass with a yellow ball in the stem which had contained I can’t remember what produce from Carrefour. Whatever it was Jackie and I didn’t buy any more of it, so we couldn’t complete the set.

Afterwards, a foursome of Fred, Laurence, Graham, and I watched Italy beat France at Rugby.

A Welsh Interlude

Fearing the heat, I set off even earlier than yesterday for a walk to Pomport and back. As I began my return journey I could see rainclouds over Sigoules, and very soon the lapis lazuli canopy under which I’d begun my outing had turned into a slate roof. The sweat I’d engendered on the way up had become decidedly cool. Now I feared for the washing I’d left out in the garden. No rain came, and the sun soon re-emerged.

I met the donkey with its goat family mentioned on 8th. June. In order to be more precise in the preceeding sentence, on my return I attempted to ascertain the sex of this creature. Although I swear all I’d done was stand and stare s/he seemed to take exception and started up an horrendous honking until I moved on. Quite fearsome really.

Further up the hill, still lies the memorial described on that same day, although the floral tribute is missing.

As Charles bears witness, vines are strung out all around Pomport, which is a most attractive village. Walking through it, I was surprised to see an antique Austin car standing in a covered alley beside a house. Wandering inside, I encountered a group of four having their breakfast. They were English. Unfazed by my intrusion, one of the men proudly informed me that he had renovated the vehicle, ‘every nut and bolt’, himself. I should have asked him what model it was, but I expect some of my readers will know. He then opened a garage door and proudly displayed a vintage Vauxhall that he planned to drive back to England next week. I think he was rather pleased someone had taken an interest.

People were playing tennis in the now half-completed Leisure Centre in the valley between Sigoules and Pomport.

Last night and this afternoon I was deeply engrossed in ‘A Welsh Childhood’ by Alice Thomas Ellis. This is a very well produced Mermaid publication enhanced by Patrick Sutherland’s evocative black and white photographs. I imagine my friend Alex Schneideman, himself a first-rate professional, would find these illustrations inspiring. The writer’s descriptions of her childhood, and diversions into Welsh myth and legend, are enthralling.

Given Ann and Don’s nineteen years in N. Wales; the family in whose company I spent last evening; and the many holidays I have enjoyed, and occasionally endured, there, the book, donated by Don, is rather pertinent. It will stay on the coffee table in the sitting room of No. 6.

What I was quite unprepared for was the similarity in style of a well-known writer to that I have been cultivating in my blog. Many of her memories sparked more of mine, for which I may find future space. Today I choose to recount some with which I believe Ms. Ellis may be out of sympathy. Although she loved the thrill and freedom of playing in the hills, she doesn’t seem to have appreciated sport. In this she is not alone, but I make no apologies.

I enjoyed numerous training runs in the hills around Gaeddren, Ann and Don’s Welsh home. (If necessary, correct my spelling, my old friend). Perched on a hill above Cerrigidrudion, this house was an ideal point from which to engage in fell running. Since I used the roads, this wasn’t actually fell running, as I had done in the Lake District, but it felt like it. Watching the changing light as I ran up and down roads cut from this rocky terrain, passing streams and rugged trees sometimes indistinguishable from the granite they clung to, was a truly exhilarating experience. It was on one of these two hour marathons that I felt my only ‘runner’s high’. No pun intended. Please don’t think I could, even on the flat, run a marathon in two hours. Here, I use the word figuratively. A ‘runner’s high’ is a feeling of intoxicated elation, said to come at one’s peak. No further pun intended. Well, I never tried LSD. I did, however, find it useful pre-decimalisation. Pun intended.

When I did seek an even route I ran the complete circuit of Llyn Tegid, known to the English as Lake Bala. Having three times, once in 88 degrees fahrenheit, managed the Bolton marathon, which ends with a six-mile stretch up the aptly named ‘Plodder Lane’, with a vicious climb at the end, I thought I might attempt the North Wales marathon. Imagine my surprise to find it boringly, unrelentingly, flat. Here I will divert, as I once did in the Bolton race. My grandmother, then in her nineties, was seated on a folding chair in order to watch me come past. I left the field, nipped across, kissed her on the head, and quickly rejoined the throng. She seemed somewhat nonplussed, as did a number of other competitors. After all, why would anyone willingly supplement, even by a few feet, a distance of 26 miles 385 yards?

The other day, in Le Code Bar I had met an Eglishman with a Birmigham accent. He had bought a house in Fonroque because he had a French girlfriend. Feeling sure Judith would know him I mentioned him to her. She did. When he turned up for a meal this evening, I saw what had attracted him to France. As they were glancing in my direction I got up from my usual table and approached the couple. I told the gentleman I had a friend who knew him. He didn’t know what I was talking about. He was French. Whoops. Undeterred I told him he had a doppelganger. Since Flaubert’s use of the word is the same as the English one, confirmed by my dictionary, I thought I was on safe ground here. I wasn’t. Fortunately the beautiful woman he was with translated and told me it wasn’t a problem. I slunk back to my duck fillet and chips followed by creme brulee, and found the two glasses of red wine quite comforting.