La Fête de la Musique

We British call 21st June 'Mid-summer's Day', the French call it the first day of summer. Given the state of the weather over the past 6 or 7 weeks, let's hope it's they, rather than we, who are correct. However, in France 21st June is also the National Music Festival. In virtually every town and commune in the country there are musical events in the streets.

In past years we've taken the up-market option of going to Aix-en-Provence for a few days. Aix has a week of

free events in the streets as well as a top-of-the-range series of musical events for which you have to pay. However, this year for the first time we passed the Fête in our local 'big town'.

Our 'big town' is the Departmental (county) 'capital' but is nevertheless quite small, with a population of 15000. Normally, after 7 in the evening the streets are empty. On Thursday, however, the streets were, by its standards, heaving.

We started at a concert of schoolchildren, supported by a few adults (above). After that, our choir sang for about half-an-hour in the Mairie (town hall). We then set off into town, passing an all-female (students of one of the Lycées or grammar schools) rock group singing in extremely profane English. What was left of my hair curled at the lyrics which, presumably, the French folk of most ages - young children through to grandparents - couldn't understand.

In the market place a group from the local Evagelical Protestant Church was singing Gospel music, surprising many French Roman Catholics who are used to a rather po-faced experience of religion. Further down, outside the inevitable Irish Pub, a Trad Jazz Band was playing swing music to the audience seated on tables outside the pub.

The atmosphere in town was really great and, despite it being a relatively cool evening, apparently the festivities went on into the small hours.

More Creatures - Footnote to our previous post.

Every September/October so far, Mr A has been attacked by some unknown, and unseen, creature which has produced very painful blistering on his ankles and lower legs. Recently, friends have told us that these are almost certainly caused by the 'aoutat', a tiny little critter which is parasitic in nature. Subsequent investigations have revealed that in the UK this monster is called the 'Harvest Tick'. In the US it's the 'chigger.

This horrid creature, only .25mm across has now taken to attacking Mrs A. Although her blisters and level of suffering are, naturally, much less impressive than those of Mr A, they are nevertheless not to be welcomed.

On a different scale, we found this little beastie in the barn the other day. It looked as if something, perhaps an owl?, had dropped it. Could this be one of the mysterious 'things' that scrabble around in our roof?