Moments in Montolieu.

19th October

Travel can be a strange. Compared to workaday life it has more than the usual number of 'moments'; it is a life rich in encounters and days which flash by slowly. And these moments don't quite make sense, because they are not moulded into the mundane by the habits of work, or family life or the  commonplace rituals of a neighbourhood. Can you imagine the freedom of not having to think every Wednesday should I put our the green or the black bin? Small freedoms  small pleasures and unexpected encounters - such is our life at the moment! The French surrealist writer Andre Breton coined a really nice phrase to describe itinerant existence. He called it 'a paradise of pitfalls'.

One difficulty however, is that because you live moment to moment, your view of things can be become skewed, like trying to make sense of experience from a series of semi-random snapshots. I've just been running yesterday's blog  through spellcheck before posting it, and realise that most of my acerbic comments about where we are staying are more or less entirely countermanded by my experience today.

After we picked up Matthew from the  airport and parked up back at Montolieu Camping. We wandered into the village for an early evening drink. 

Matthew joins us, time to get the awning out!

The walk from campsite to village passed a really lovely old estate

reflections in the mill pond

The Cafe du Conmerce was busy, couples, extended families with kids happily dodging about between the tables and playing with the water in the nearby fountain.

early evening drinks in the Care du Commerce

 I conjectured that the group of sporty looking young men gathered by the door may have been the village football team. The campsite is situated, as so often, next to 'le stade and la piscine'. Throughout the later afternoon occasional cheers and shouts drifted across from the nearby sports field, Sporting Montolieu were apparently playing at home. Judging from the general bonhomie and the size of the glasses of pastis in the hands of the players outside the cafe, I think it was safe to assume it had been a home victory.

The village football team?

In the soft autumn sunlight, as the shadows lengthened, the Cafe du Commerce seemed a paragon of the convivial,Fraternité in action, an example of an inclusive social culture that drives we northerners southwards, disgruntled children of the Reformation, happy to sit on the fringes and observe more a catholic community in action.

So what about Montolieu? Is it some kind of inadvertently hilarious artsy enclave that I described yesterday, or an idyllic evocation of a more outdoor, social able southern culture?  Is it both, neither, or something else altogether. Really how as a visitor can you ever tell? I was left to reflect that travel is much more a pursuit of encounters than a search for meaning - life in the moment, a 'paradise of pitfalls'.