Anything but "Plane"

Ministerial Meandering

Anything but ‘plane’

I think we saw only two 2CV’s in all our trip. That was, I admit, something of a
disappointment, as we had had one of our own (in bright yellow) in another part
of our existence. The original 2CV has now become rather a collector’s item, so
that the price to own one has risen along with its rarity. Sad - they were great
cars.

However, our rented little Opel saw us buzzing along the rural roads of Languedoc
- Roussillon, noting with pleasure the complete absence of trucks/baakies. There
were lorries, of course, but not the horrific sized versions that North America
sports - and there is a very good reason for both of these observations.
Without travelling on the autoroutes (highways), the vast majority of French
roads are narrow and single-lane, which makes driving a large vehicle well-nigh

impossible, unless you want to swap your wing mirror with the on-coming
camion.

Parking spaces in towns are also ridiculously small by North American standards,
and require a deftness of touch and skill to avoid shunting into place.
It helps to be prepared for your journey too, as the south of France closes from
noon to 1600 each day, and if you had planned on having a leisurely lunch, and
only start looking for somewhere around 1330, you are going to go hungry - or at
the very least, incur the wrath of the local chef whose sieste de l’après-midi you
have just curtailed.

Market day is different for each village or small town, as the same stalls move
from one to another through the week, setting up to be ready at 0800, and
closing promptly at noon, their stalls and equipment vanishing with astonishing
speed into station wagons and white vans, as the motorized street-cleaning
vehicles chase them away and clear up the detritus. The stall owners can be seen,
job done, with their feet up on the dash, chewing their prepared baguette, before
also succumbing to the obligatory sieste, beneath the sunscreen of the local
paper.

Villages pass by the windows of our car with grace and style; old, orange-yellow
sandstone houses, looking as though no-one lives there - or ever has done - for
decades. But behind the main road there are other layers to the onion, often
with old cobbled streets onto which the local ladies bring their dogs for afternoon
gossip and physiological relief (for the dogs).

Frequently, in the bigger villages, an old church with an ancient wooden door ajar
will beckon, and exploration may reveal speckled sunlight, dusty saints, and
darker secrets of olden days. The ones we visited were sadly empty of sentient
life forms, and absent of any cadence of music - with the exception of the
cathedral in Narbonne, where a Sunday morning mass was being celebrated, even

though visitors were allowed access to the rest of the building other than the
choir, where the mass was in progress. A solitary nun sang the responses to the
intercessions; the acoustics were superb.

But for all these moments, none sparked the memories of the France of my youth
more than the avenues of plane trees down which we drove, mile after mile,
through rolling vineyards, only a few of which had been touched by the recent
fires. It was a great trip, and anything but ‘plane.’

Philip+