LA BELLE SAISON

Just finished a super book, full of food, weather, hard work, love, loss, heart ache, wine..... ........just about everything which makes me want to live in France. Granted I couldn't cope with living in the south...too hot by far and the mistral!  No way.

But books such as La Belle Saison by Patricia Atkinson, 

the Peter Mayle books about Provence 

or the Carol Drinkwater Olive Farm Trilogy certainly whet the appetite for French rural life.  What could be better than working from dawn till dusk on your olive farm or vineyard only to have a hail storm wreck everything?  No, seriously folks, it's not all bad.  The compensations of good fellowship with equally hard-working neighbours, who will support you through the bad times and celebrate with your good times cannot be measured.  And the food, the wine, the cheese!!!!

French rural life  encompasses hunting...la chasse...mushroom hunting (no good to me I hate mushrooms), fishing, collecting fruit and all the domestic goddess activities of bottling and preserving; growing your own naturellment, for organic fruit and vegetables; the local wines and cheeses; local celebrations to enjoy.  Brilliant!


We have a house in rural France, not isolated but in a 'hameau' tacked on to a hamlet so small it doesn't even boast a boulangerie or tabac.  That necessitates having a car so, as we get older, we'll have to make decisions about where to move ..... we'll need to move into town so we can have access to local services, doctor, pharmacie, supermarket, entertainment etc. but where?


Sometimes we wander around Vichy and dream.  I wonder what it costs to live in the Old Town?  I would love that.

All this stays on hold until my parents die....what a sobering thought.  My Mother  asked me the other day when we were going to retire and I could hardly say, 'When you're dead!' so I told her the bishop wanted us to stay till D is 70 and, you never know, that might be when we can go.


So, until then, I must make do with my books.  I'm looking for the first book Patricia Atkinson wrote, so back to dreaming.


Images from Amazon so look inside function probably won't work.