A day out

Parachutists, Lézignan-Corbières

As we often do, we met Patricia and Martin at Le Somail for lunch, since it's roughly half way between our homes.  On the way we paused at Lézignan aerodrome to watch people parachuting, including some pretty acrobatic descents.  The last had not yet landed when their aeroplane did, which struck me as a shade dangerous. Within a few minutes of landing, the little Cessna was loaded up with another dozen or so nutters and off into the air - slightly overloaded, to judge by the length of the take-off run. Well, it's certainly nothing we'll ever have to worry about.

Good meal as usual at the Auberge du Somail in excellent company.  As they are both great sailors, Patricia and Martin also like a little boat ride on the canal, and it has become a regular ritual for us.  On a couple of

Three men in a boat, Canal du Midi

occasions we have hired a little battery boat, and last time we packed on to a rather busy cruiser.  We chose the smaller cruise barge yesterday.  The planes along the side of  the canal are dying off in great numbers now, which makes for a sad sight.  But some of the skeletal trees clearly show Gaudí's inspiration for the columns of the nave in the Sagrada Familia.  I get conflicting stories of what will be planted to replace the planes.  One went that a fungus-resistant variety of plane had been chosen, another that they would be replaced with ash.  Though the once magnificent planes are the trademark of the canal - and also of countless French highways - there are stretches of the canal, including the one we sailed yesterday, where the trees along the towpaths are oak or pine, and they too have their charm. 

As we came back along  the canal to Le Somail, one of us noticed a duck with a curious green marking on its face.  On closer scrutiny we saw that it had managed, when much smaller, to pick up the plastic ring from

Martyn, Martin and green-banded mallard

a soft drink bottle and swing it round over the back of its head, where it was firmly jammed.  The bird has grown to maturity, so it obviously hasn't stopped it from feeding.  Numerous attempts to catch it, including the deployment of a certain VW cargo net, were to no avail, and once it had devoured most of the bread we'd tried to lure it ashore with, it swam off happily with its mate and a duckling in tow.

Later:  Today is one of the Sundays when the village holds it foire à la brocante - flea market to us lesser mortals.  Most of the usual suspects were there, though there was a notable absence of the usual portable bidets.  Our herb man was there, so we have bought a thyme plant to stick in the miserable soil out the front.  He assures us that they do better in poor than in cultivated, fertilised soil - that's handy....  An anglophone with an ever-present roll-up cigarette, his gravelly voice is very similar to my nephew's.  Not sure whether their roll-ups are similarly constituted.

Also on the main drag when we arrived was a little procession of 1950s and 60s American Fords: one T-bird and five or six Mustangs.  The Thunderbird exhausted noisily from just behind the driver's door.  Good, loud V8 noise, of course, but I preferred the slightly more refined note of the properly-maintained Mustangs.

As we watched the world from a table in the cafe de la Promenade, a few neighbours paused to say hello.  One who chairs the local association for catching and altering stray cats shares our suspicion that Manky has succumbed to his chronic bronchitis.  His survival over the winter (which had been puzzling us) was thanks, evidently, to her having left a bed for him in her garage.  Hope we're all wrong, but I doubt it - he is or was a very old cat.