...but not without its pleasant episodes. We had apéritifs at the Coopers' in Mèze on Tuesday, before heading out to lunch at a local hostelry. Would you ever have thought of cod crumble? If not, do so, and if you can cook it with the perfection we encountered at L'Oscarine (no web site yet), you're in line for a couple of toques. We got to meet for the first time Patricia and Martin's granddaughters Eléonore and Tessa, who are home in France after a couple of years in Djibouti, where their parents have been teaching. Next stop: Perpignan, which is about as exotic as it gets in metropolitan France!
If it were not tragic, it would make for great farce. The leading lights all scrambling back from their dishonest campaign rhetoric, J0hns0n showing all the signs of thinking 'Oh shit: surely they can't have voted to leave?'. Given that his motivation for leading the campaign was to wrest the leadership from a weak, lacklustre PM, his withdrawal from the leadership contest when he realised there was a difficult job to do shows just what he is made of. Wind and piss - at best. As for G0v3, the most that can be said of him is that he has spared us J0hns0n. Across the floor, the leader seems just as set on dismantling his party, which used to be mine. Regulars will recall my musings on the philosophy essay title 'Why do we value a democracy?', to which our tutor group responded more or less unanimously: 'search me, guv!'. Mr Freedland's article in today's Grauniad is unusually but appropriately outspoken. As I said on forwarding it to my MP, borrowing a common line used by senior judicial wingers, 'I agree, and there is nothing I can usefully add'
Well, to restore a sense of proportion, I should report that the countryside is looking wonderful at the moment. The wild flowers by the roadside are lovely - travellers' joy, scabious, dianthus and many other beautiful subjects that I have yet to look up (where did I leave the book?). I got us lost yesterday on the way to lunch in Leucate, hence a detour through Embres et Castelmaure, and we were rewarded with a fine display of morning glory climbing up a wall and twining across the telephone wire.
As I write, an army of volunteers is setting up the Halle for the piano festival. Not a lot I can do given my current crippledom. The most enormous percussion section is being set up: I thought the Bartok piece only involved two pianos and timpani! Watch this space. Tomorrow, we become theatrical landlords for a few nights, and shall be collecting the delightful Yshani from the airport, as well as the front of house man, Martin, from the railway station. The next few days ought to lift the depression a bit, eh?
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