10.6.12.
It rained during the night and throughout the morning, part of which I spent blogging in Le Code Bar. By noon, the deluge having subsided, I set off along the Eymet road via the Ste. Innocence fork. Cattle were lying down and the enormous white rabbit I had seen in a field last year was no longer in evidence. The dogs from the garden next to the retirement homes were clearly sheltering. Perhaps they were not mad enough to venture ‘out in[to] the midday [gloom]’. Nothing save the caws of distant rooks and the dismal ‘uni-ted’ of a solitary bachelor woodpigeon disturbed the silence of this soggy Sunday siesta period.
Ater half an hour I retraced my steps and by the time I re-entered Sigoules a weak sun was struggling to emerge as had a man quietly tending vines; and a young boy, with whom I exchanged ‘bonjour’, was doing wheelies on the tarmac. Nothing else was happening. Was the lad as bored as I would have been at his age on a lonely Sunday? Reflecting on the rainy weekends of a pre-television childhood I realise that the older one gets the less boredom there is in life. Not that we were always bored. Chris and I once made our own Monopoly set. This wasn’t a game to play with Grandma who would ‘accidentally’ upset the board when she was losing.
In the evening I watched ‘De L’eau pour les Elephants’ (Water for the Elephants). This is a very good story, beautifully filmed, set in a circus during the Great Depression. The stars are Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, and Christoph Waltz. In order to improve my understanding of French I watch films, either in the original or French versions with French subtitles. Although I can read the language quite well I have difficulty in grasping the spoken word, particularly when delivered at the normal rate. This doesn’t really work with fast-paced thrillers like ‘Unlimited’ which I watched last night, so something more romantic like this one is more helpful. Sub-titles, of course, are never literal translations, but I am at the stage where I can recognise the difference between what is said and what is written on the screen.
I slipped up on the catering front today. Those who follow the culinary codas to my posts may be amused to learn that today’s meal was two boiled eggs. I had not realised that Le Code Bar does not provide meals on Sundays and anyway closes at lunchtime. I suppose the staff do have to rest sometime. It was a privilege to be allowed to stay and finish my blog. Nothing else is open in Sigoules on the sabbath and the eggs were all I had in the fridge.