Quirieu, France, Saturday July 5th

This morning we accompanied Anne-Marie to the market in Montalieu. This town has many very old stone buildings and a museum (closed today) that focuses on the cement industry and has a collection of items made by artisans working in stone. Perhaps during the week we would be able to visit it. As we walked along the streets towards the market, Anne-Marie introduced us to a teacher friend of hers who had known Joel. Having felt good about our language improvement, it was a disappointment not to be able to understand any conversation that was not directed at us.
The market is in a square and is not too big, but has plenty of clothing and fruit and vegetables stalls as well as a pizza and quiche van run by Italians and some stalls with cheeses. We took a tour of it, looking at the variety of offerings and the prices. Potatoes were relatively expensive but cucumbers and stone fruit were not. There were so many different types of tomatoes and also vegetables that we had never seen. In the centre we waited for Anne-Marie at the war memorial, which recorded the names of locals who died for the glory of France in many different wars. Anne-Marie’s basket was full of purchases – she is an outstanding cook and the meals we have been eating have been superb and very healthy. She commented that the supermarket can often be cheaper but that the choice, the variety and the quality is superior in the market.
After lunch – always a proper sit down meal here – we all set off in the car to pick up Annelise from the station and to visit the village of Perouge, a medieval village which is still lived in, but for which there are many regulations to preserve its historic character. No advertising hoardings or cars are allowed (apart from cars of residents, supposed to be discreetly parked in garages or walled-off parking areas) and only signs in medieval style can be used to tell of the presence of bakeries and boutiques. Perouges has been the setting for many movies, since it is authentic and not modernised, with all restorations having been to the standards for historic buildings set down by the municipality. We had great fun imagining ourselves as people from the days of Robin Hood (I don’t know any French characters of the times), and looking at all the interesting details. The glass in the windows shows inconsistencies with thicker and thinner parts in the one piece.
The 15th century church of St Marie-Madeleine has walls 1.4 metres thick and unusual windows in the shape of keyholes. There is a statue of St George killing a miniscule dragon and a very beautiful carving of Christ on the cross. As we were passing it again when we left Perouges, we saw a wedding party lined up in front of the doors for photos. They looked to be Lebanese and we were not sure whether they had been married there while we looked around the village, or whether it was simply a gorgeous back drop for their photos.
During our time in Perouges we relaxed as we nibbled on the local gateaux, a thin, ‘large pizza’-sized biscuit type cake with sugar sprinkled on it, and sipped the local cider.

When we got home, Remy, the son of Anne-Marie’s sister, called in and it was wonderful to meet him, since he is a good friend of Joel’s. He was off on his holidays to the Greek islands so he didn’t stay long. After a delicious meal of salad, with leek and mushroom quiche, cheeses and cherries, we watched a program about condors. In France they have more than six public channels and also satellite so the choice of program here is from 550 channels. Those who have cable would have more. People pay a tax for public television and there are no free to air programs. They also pay for satellite if they wish to have it. The change to having commercials on every channel has meant a lowering in the tax. It was easy to follow the commentary and the conversations in the Condor program because they were fairly predictable and dealt with only a small range of topics. Watching the news is another level of challenge altogether. I made good progress with my novel, which is really a pretty silly book, with one character finding a corpse and thinking that the sensible thing to do is to drag it home and try to hide it in the kitchen cupboard. No French author can be blamed for this because it is a translation from the English original.