Our Last Month in Seix

NOVEMBER

One child can make a big difference in a small village. Agnes, as always, has made oodles of friends and her departure will create a little vacuum in their lives, according to their mothers. The same is true of Emile and his friend Bruno, Felix and Jolan, and Mahalia has spent almost every hour that she’s not with us, with her friend Mayliss. They will miss each other a lot. Our house is in the centre of the village, a village that is quickly aging, and it is always full of children, our children and everyone else’s. Mireille, our old friend and neighbour, has said “when you go there will be a big hole in the life of the village.” We don’t know everyone in the village but everyone knows us, whether because we’re ‘the Australians’ or because they know one or more of the four children. It’s a small pond and we provide quite a few fish.

The Kids Friends; Jolan and Lucas

Emile, Agnes and Felix all spend a lot of time at Jean-Claude’s house. Jean Claude is a small, old man with few teeth and hands that have become claw-like with arthritis. He loves to have all the village children around playing in his steep, huge yard, and he also houses every stray cat in the village, and their myriad kittens. They make bows and arrows there (the children, not the cats) and swing on a 5 metre high rope swing on the tree at the top of the hill into the void over the village and then back again to the precipitous slope. Emile fell of last week at full swing and hurt his back. Emile has spent hours at Jean Claude’s recently with all his tools, carving wooden knives and arrows.

It's Really Cold

N is 9 years old and has brought himself up. He has a brother who will end up gaol, a mother who is a drug addict and is now pregnant with her fourth child. N has been known to sleep on the street because his Mum hasn’t answered the door. At Halloween, he came to the front door at 10pm, by himself, to collect lollies. A week before that he and his brother and some friends went around the village spraying graffiti on walls and cars. He has already been up at the police station. Life here is certainly beautiful, but there is a dark side too.

A Medieval Toilet; A Medieval Mahalia

Mum arrived today. We picked her up at the dinky little airport in Carcassonne and brought her back to ‘the fridge’. We’ve made the lounge/dining area really cosy with a fire and a warm red rug, but to leave this sanctuary of warmth we risk frostbite.

The stone of the buildings in Perigord is the colour of butter and not-too-cooked caramel, so different from the rough grey we have in Ariege. We’ve come here to show Mum the beauty of the Dordogne and the Perigord cuisine (don’t come here if you don’t like duck and goose products). We’re staying in a little golden hotel in Coux, where we have been given a warm welcome by the couple who run it. They have even provided 11 and 7 year old boys and a 9 year old girl to play with our children! How thoughtful!

The Golden Stone of Sarlat

Our first stop was Lascaux, where a complete and exact replica of the most celebrated cavern has been made for tourists. The caves were discovered by 4 teenagers and their dog, Robot, in the 1940’s and they were very soon overrun with thousands of tourists each day. The opening to the cave was enlarged, stairs and ventilation were installed, and soon enough the 16,000 year old paintings were being destroyed by bacteria, mould and carbon dioxide, so they were closed in 1963. The paintings are amazing for their sophistication and for the incorporation of the relief of the cave wall in the shapes of the animals.






The valley of the Dordogne is littered with fabulous castles so we saw a few of these: Castelnaud, Beynac (where the film Chocolat was made), Marqueyssac, and a spooky chateau fort that was built into the side of a cliff.

Felix Falls in Blackberry Bush; The Dordogne

It’s amazing how your body changes in one year (read: ages). I’m sure that when we left Australia I could do without my glasses. Close work was easier with them but I could still get by without them. Now I’m in a panic if I leave them on the second floor and I have to look up a telephone number, or even dial the telephone number. Forget about reading without them: I’d have to hold the book with my feet to decipher anything. I even need them to eat my dinner for goodness sake. I can’t see what I’m eating otherwise. I understand so very clearly now why old people (a term which theoretically could also apply to me???) wear their glasses on a string around their neck. They may as well walk around without eyes as without their glasses.

Yesterday we took Mum to the Col de la Crouzette. It seems to be a place we take our parents, having already been there with Dad and Cheryl, and with Francoise. It’s on top of a ridge that lines up to the south of the steepest mountains that form the frontier with Spain, and it’s so high (1,400m) that that the view is uninterrupted and extraordinary. Yesterday was so very beautiful because the air was crystal clear and there was a 20cm quilt of fresh snow all around us. Mum was transported, and it was a real joy to see her joy at being in such a special place. Although she’s seen snow several times before, and even started her limited skiing career at the ripe age of 61, she’d never seen it so fresh and thick and luscious and people free. There was nobody around for miles.

Mum on Top of the World

November 25, 2008
It’s snowing in the village! Today we’ll go tobogganing. Last night was absolutely freezing, but it’s OK because it’s all so beautiful today. Snowflakes fall so delicately, it’s a miracle something so airy and pure can make the journey from a heavy grey cloud to earth without being obliterated. Instead, those trillions of tiny white water sculptures congregate together clearly believing strongly that there is strength in numbers, and indeed there is: massed together, these subtle forms subdue all noise and cow all bad behaviour so that a village like ours is transformed, and everyone is smiling and contours are soft and the world is transformed into something completely different, clothed in the pureness of white.

The kids were eager to leave for school, scooping up the snow from the tops of the cars and battling each other all the way to school. They sat in their classrooms transfixed by another snowfall with huge flakes flurrying outside. And this afternoon they came in, grabbed the toboggans and plastic bags and raced out to find a steep snow covered slope. We went to Toulouse today to buy Christmas presents for the children, and what has become a ho hum drive was today so beautiful, it seemed like a completely different route. It’s really cold though.

Tunisian Patisserie in Toulouse

November 27
Last night Ludo and I went to the theatre in Foix. It’s very hard to motivate yourself when it’s -2 degrees outside and you’re siting beside the fire, the theatre is an hour’s drive away, and to step beyond the lounge-room door and out into the fridge (aka the corridor) involves scarves, coats and beanies. We did motivate ourselves however, and it was a wonderful play. The play, “Biography Without Antoinette”, was written by the Swiss playwright, Max Frisch, and it had five fine actors including Thierry L’Hermitte and Sylvie Testud, both pillars of the French film industry. This is the first play I’ve seen in French, and it was a revelation to me. I understood it! Even if my speech has barely improved, at least I have progressed with my comprehension. A week ago we went to the same theatre to see a performance of Ushu by a Japanese choreographer. Half of the programme was fabulous, but the other half was snoring boring, which was a real shame because we had Mum, Mahalia and Agnes with us.

Last bike ride today. Ludo and I donned scarves, gloves, beanies and layers of clothes and rode up to the Col de Catchaudegue for the last time, in the snow. It was cold, cold, cold, and involved some slick and serious manoeuvres around patches of ice and snow. It was a little dangerous, I guess you could say, but it was magnificent at the top looking out on the landscape we normally see covered in green, blanketed in white from the village on the valley floor to peaks on the horizon. The seasons change and so does our appreciation of the passage of time. It’s like a helix, going around and around but never to the same point at which it began, each turn of the helix representing four seasons. Maybe that’s why DNA is in the form of a helix: the blueprint of life reflecting the passage of time. And now that I think upon it, there are four bases that make up DNA, the sequence of which determines the genetic code. That’s a fine metaphor. I digress. We’re nearly packed.

Hay Bales in the Snow: Our Last Ride

Saturday morning. It’s cold and the sky is flat and grey. It looks two-dimensional. I’m sure it’s going to snow. Agnes and I walked up to the village’s new library to borrow some books and see Felix, who goes there to play computer games. It’s a great library for a village this size. On the way there we pass the old 16th century chapel that is now getting a new roof. Adjacent to the chapel is the old cure’s residence and garden. The Historical Society here has spent the last few years doing up this building, and replanting the garden as it would have looked a few hundred years ago, now it’s the chapel’s turn. When we went to visit the newly opened garden we saw photos of the interior of the chapel and it was a revelation. It is do beautiful inside. The ceiling is covered in clue with gold stars, and all the walls are painted with fabulous images. A few weeks ago the workmen were there and the ancient front door was open and the key was in the door, and that was a wonderful sight. The key was a venerable one, as old as the door itself, bronze, twisted, huge. I love to see a key of that beauty used for the purpose for which it was made.

So, we went to the library, and I found a book on Picasso’s Guernica to borrow. I saw Maica, so we kissed on both cheeks and talked about the party, and then I saw Aisha from the Tourist Office, so we kissed on both cheeks, and I told her we were leaving next week, then we left the library and walked back through the centre of the village and saw Noe on his bike and he asked if Emile was at home and he said he’d be by later, and then I saw the florist, and we kissed on both cheeks and we talked about her son’s birthday party tomorrow and I asked whether she’d left a coat at our place and we discussed her purchase of our clothes dryer, and then we went to the hairdresser to make an appointment and we kissed on both cheeks and discussed the cold and then we walked towards Orissia’s house and passed Arlette on the way but we didn’t kiss because she has a cold and we discussed her health and then we continued on to Orissia’s house and Alain came to the door and we kissed on both cheeks and he invited us for a pizza night and we discussed Yolan’s birthday party which is tomorrow, and then Myriam drove up and we kissed on both cheeks and discussed again the pizzas and the party, and then I left Agnes to play with Orissia and I walked home and came across Janine (who used to clean our house when Ludo’s grandparents were here) and we kissed on both cheeks and discussed our imminent departure and the even more imminent snow, and Pascale walked by and we kissed on both cheeks and they kissed on both cheeks and I asked whether Ludo had payed her for the babysitting and she confirmed that it would snow, and then I was in front of the front door, and I slid inside, one hour after I’d left for a quick visit to the library!



Yesterday I was finishing up the packing, trying to squeeze a year into a few suitcases, and I came across a firework. The deeper I delved into the suitcase I was repacking, the more fireworks I came across. Emile. Emile loves fireworks. They are not, apparently, illegal in France. The fellow at the tabac sells them to the children in the village and it makes me mad. Emile thinks this is the most fabulous thing ever sold in a shop and it’s been really hard to impress on him how dangerous they can be. He’s been forbidden to use them, but all his friends do so the danger is still there. They hold the small bungers in their hands and light the fuse and then throw them. Emile desperately wants to show them to his friend Jamie so he had the fine idea of smuggling them into Australia in our suitcases. He used amazing cunning in sequestering them in the pockets of trousers and under the fabric flap that covers the suitcase hinges, and wrapped up in jumpers…. When ordered to surrender them all it took him half an hour to find them all.

It’s time to say goodbye, so we have a weekend of parties, Mahalia has 6 friends for a sleepover on Friday night, Emile has friends for pizza and a cinema trip. We have 15 adults and 15 children coming on Saturday night, then Agnes and Felix have their little friends around on Sunday. Help!

Virginie and Aurore; Bitte, Laurent, Manoy and Giulia

Laurent and Mireille

Virginie; Mario and Olivier