TIme Suspended

The Fête de musique is not just in Argelés but throughout many European countries. In Geneva groups play in the stations, the street corners and parks free. The concert halls are filled.

Here in Argéles it is no different. The Ecole de Musique with its brick building at La Place de Republique had had concerts all this week with different types of music including gospel and jazz.

The first summer street dance with a live band was held last night. Tourists and natives intermingles on the marble slab centre that earlier in the day had held automobiles. The restaurant had extra tables under the trees where they served wine, pastis, beer having cleared away earlier diners.

Dancers of all ages swiredl by. Some women wore dresses with full, flouncy skirts. Others wore shorts. Children twisted through the dancers, their laughter mixing with the woman singer.

It was there I found one of the Danish couples for the first time. I knew they had returned. This is a village and people say… “I and K are back.” Their progress up the street had been recounted so many times, I wondered if they had been cloned into several couples.

I had already talked to their daughter out our facing windows. She has a week of freedom before her son arrives.

These are my favourite weeks in the village, not that I don’t love the other times, but it is truly a vacation mode. I can hear my daughter saying “Vacation HAH” the same way she says “Retirement HAH” because I don’t stop writing during this period.

The longest day has come and gone and we are now heading toward the darkest, but not before we have many long summer nights in cafés, listening to music and talking to people of all nationalities. We all have other lives elsewhere but this becomes a temps suspendu in a way. We are carried into a special place of friendship, laughter, good food and muic.