Sometimes that quiet life isn't so quiet
When you try on a new life for size, you don't take your old shoes with you. Plus a recipe for a mussel gratin, a menu and a get-ahead workplan.
When we lived in London, our lives were a blocked-out, colour-coded calendar of dinners and drinks parties, cinema and theatre outings, lectures and concerts, weekends away, sociable work events and dog-walking rendez-vous with friends. My job as a food writer meant that we got invited out quite a lot, and I used to justify expensive restaurant visits to myself as research. Please excuse this “my diamond tiara gives me a headache” moment, but honestly sometimes it was exhausting and I often longed for an evening in front of the telly with eggs on toast on a tray.
Part of the appeal of moving to a French village was to try on a slightly quieter, calmer life for size. I was long past swapping my FOMO (fear of missing out) for JOMO (joy of missing out), and besides, during Covid I had tossed out all of my high heels in a moment of bored rebellion. What do we want? Comfortable feet. When do we want them? Now, and for the rest of our lives, thank you very much, what were we thinking with the five inch heels?
I admit, the throwing out of the shoes worried me a bit. Had those Covid-enforced months of near-isolation ruined me for polite society? Was I going to go completely feral and start weaving my own yoghurt and fashioning make up from woad and berries? Would I become a stranger to the hair brush?
Last year, the boat’s departure was delayed because someone accidentally mislaid the curate…
Also, in our new, quiet life, would I miss London’s museums, galleries and theatres? After thirty years of the best of everything being on my doorstep, or at least a trip on the 73 bus away, would this peaceful life sustain me? I knew I had a regular, terrible habit if invited to something I thought sounded just too “improving” of pretending I was otherwise engaged that evening, to save the feelings of the friend organising the lecture on Nineteenth Century drains or the evening of competitive yodelling or – my idea of over-accessorised hell – the artfully-themed fancy dress party. But after a few months, would I be longing for the diversion of a lecture on the sugarcraft of the Eighteenth Century?
I really knew nothing, did I?
Montpellier and Nîmes, both shortish drives away, are full of museums, theatres and concert halls. There are also enough local single-subject museums around to warm my nerdish heart, such as the anatomy museum in Montpellier, the door museum in Pézenas, and the museum devoted to the life and work of the poet and singer, Georges Brassens in Sète. If, like me, you have a fondness for the sort of local museum that is a mishmash of old plates, lace bonnets, fans, muskets, and gloomy portraits of the great and the long forgotten, then there is the Musée Agathois Jules Badou in Agde.
And our village is always busy with something. I am once again working my way through EF Benson’s delicious Mapp and Lucia stories, often my comfort reading, and they strike new chords of recognition with me. The intrigues, concerts, charity teas, fêtes, exhibitions, dinners, plays and parties in Tilling, Benson’s fictitious seaside town based on Rye in East Sussex, remind me a little of the wild social whirl in our own seaside port de plaisance.
Many of Marseillan’s events, naturally, revolve around local food and wine. The village rarely misses a chance to lay out the trestle tables and long benches for a cheerful, companionable feast. The first weekend we arrived in September, there was the eel festival – all of the eels pulled sustainably from the Étang de Thau. There are oyster festivals and also the children’s food market, when a part of the regular Tuesday market is set aside for the children to run the stalls and their friends to shop with special free tokens, the aim of which, no doubt, is to set them up for a lifetime of knowing how to select the perfect tomato.
It feels like every weekend there is some kind of parade, which often starts or finishes in the square in front of our house. There is always a band. There are often giants and fancy dress. One of my favourites is the Fête de la Saint-Pierre, St Peter’s Festival, this year on June 30. A brass band leads parishioners and local grandees including, of course, the mayor, from the church to a boat on the port. There are a lot of red, white and blue sashes, many more fluttering tricolours. Last year, the boat’s departure was delayed because someone accidentally mislaid the curate, but eventually they went off, to cast flowers into the middle of the étang to commemorate the sacrifice of sailors and fishermen lost at sea.
As we approach summer, I look forward to the fireworks for July 14, (Bastille Day, as nobody calls it here, favouring la fête nationale instead) and the evening craft markets on the port. For many, the highlights of summer are the water jousting (les joutes) and the greasy pole competition (lo capelet), daredevilling exploits which would never pass a finickity health and safety inspection, but are tremendous fun. Essentially in the first, two teams row towards each other in large boats, a red one and a blue one, with each boat’s hero of the hour standing proud on top of a sort of ladder at the back armed with a lance and shield. They aim to knock their opposition into the water. There is often shouting. There is sometimes blood. There is, of course, always a band. It goes on all afternoon. For the capelet, a mast is suspended from a barge and covered in thick grease. Men and boys attempt to run up the pole and retrieve one of two top hats at the end. Again, a band. Again it goes on all afternoon.
Into the autumn, there will be festivals to mark the wine harvest and then Halloween, which comes with more parades and fancy dress. In our first year, with our house in such a dilapidated state, I feel I missed a trick by not creating some sort of Addams Family tribute house. Who knows what this year might bring?
All year long, there are plays and other events at the small theatre in our road. The latest, just two weeks ago, a recital by our utterly delightful chemist, who sang everything from Gershwin, to Elvis, Amy Winehouse to Tina Turner. The crowd went wild, applauding as though our prescriptions depended on it. I will never forget his Wrecking Ball. There are concerts in the church and in the community hall, often to raise money for something or other. It’s impossible here to pretend I’m otherwise engaged, should someone invite me to their evening of Languedocien sea shanties from the Nineteenth Century. Our house is in such a prominent spot in the village, I would have to conceal myself behind the sofa with the lights off all night as if hiding from a bailiff. Last week, when my friend Lola was visiting, she arrived quite early and found me not home. No matter. Two helpful passers-by informed her I was having coffee on the terrace of the Marine Bar, sitting at a table at the back. I still have no idea who it was.
So there is nothing left for me but to throw myself into it all, this quiet village life, mostly with joy in my heart. Eggs on a tray are quite possibly overrated. And for the Mapp and Lucia fans among you, until the next time, au reservoir!
Gratin de moules aux épinards
Mussel gratin with spinach
You can serve this as a starter or as a main course. I like to serve it as a course on its own, but you can certainly add some side vegetables if you want. I would have French beans, but then given the chance I will always have French beans. Don’t listen to me.
Serves 6 as a starter, 4 as a main course
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