Life in a French Village

 

"The geants are lined up at the church," my husband said. He'd just been out to get brioche fresh from the oven for guests invited for breakfast.

We live in the center of the village. Most of the houses are new in comparison to the founding of the village in Charlemagne's time. 

Our flat is in a 400-year old building, modernized of course but with a stone-wall kitchen and some of the original beams. The cattle and chickens that once occupied the ground floor are long gone.

Yesterday was another fête where the geants were paraded through the streets. A number of bands played on various street corners.

Sardane dancers were in the Place de Republique. Locals joined the dancers in costume for the simple steps which look easy but aren't. For a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HdKZx4_JeM

My favorite fête is the correfoc. People dressed in fireproof clothing dance to drums and throw fireworks of their bodies as they dance.

 

Tables were set out for a meal later in the day. The plaza next to the church was the cemetery a couple of centuries ago. Today, there's a fountain and places to sit under shady trees.

The table clothes were in an alternate yellow and red covering to match the Catalan Flag because this is Catalan country. I would never dare tell any of the locals anything different, but unlike the Catalans just over the border n Spain, there is no talk of separation from France.

As a writer, I am often in the different places I write about if not in reality in my imagination, but living  here part time and in Geneva part time I can feel, smell and sometimes taste a different life from the one I lived as a child.