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Tuesday 15 October 2013

Books, Barbed Wire and One of the Most Beautiful Towns in France

What has happened to the months since January? Despite trips to Chartres and Orleans, Paris and Compiegne, Biarritz and St Jean-de-Luz, and further afield, too, I have resisted the temptation to blog. I have, for once, turned off the Internet until dinnertime and put my expanding bottom firmly onto my chair at my desk, where I have written and rewritten 80,000 words of text for my book. Apart from a major hiccup with Dropbox, which left 20,000 of said, slightly different words, floating in cyberspace, I’m now on the downhill run towards my end of November deadline.

Nowadays, it takes a lot to get me away from my beloved Bardies. So when an email arrived from a friend in the Quercy telling me about a fledgling literary festival in the Tarn-et-Garonne, I thought for approximately five minutes before jumping at the chance to go and listen to other writers speak of their experiences and challenges. With a change in the weather, it provided just the ticket, metaphorically speaking because all the events were free. The lovely Occitan village of Parisot is home to a thriving community of readers and writers and a committee of five, French and English, put together a festival to compete with many a more illustrious rival. I gather that it is the only one south of Paris.

The festival opened on Friday evening with a musical and literary soiree, which, sadly, I missed. An absentee friend had kindly lent me her lovely house in Puylaroque for the weekend and I miscalculated the extent of Friday night’s traffic on the Toulouse Peripherique in a downpour. Saturday morning dawned even wetter, so I arrived at the salle des fetes in Parisot via a muddy and circuitous back route at 10.31 am, soggy, late and flustered. Straight away, my mood lifted with the warm and welcome atmosphere. Maree Gilles, an Australian survivor of the forced care system, kicked the day off with a harrowing account of her experiences as a sixteen-year old. A few years ago, Maree published a debut novel, a fictional account of the pain and trauma of her time in care. Its impact proved so devastating that it contributed to a class apology from the Australian government. We were off to a great start. Over the years, I’ve been to many literary festivals where I’ve squinted over the shoulders of someone a foot taller than me and wished I had better glasses and an electronic hearing aid. Oh, the pleasure in a small festival with no ubiquitous video screen!

After a splendid lunch with the invited authors, we continued with a session from Amanda Hodgkinson about her award winning bestseller, 22 Britannia Road. It was a privilege to hear her read in the three voices from her beautifully written book. I was minded of the great Edna O’Brien’s remonstrance that when writers have chosen their words so very carefully, the obligation is upon us, the reader, to absorb and savour them. Such it was with a true poet and wordsmith like Amanda. I am now the owner of two copies of her marvelous book, one for me, and one for my daughter who is following in the footsteps of our great Irish writers reading English at Trinity College, Dublin.

Afterwards, in complete contrast, the urbane, dapper and witty Guardian journalist, Martin Walker, spoke about his marvelous fictional creation, Bruno, Chief of Police. Also, dear to my heart, Martin talked about the riven history of France, as well as his passion for all things French, especially its food and wine. We await the forthcoming Bruno cookery book with relish. As someone who tends to avoid crime fiction, I am about to become a convert to Martin’s Gallic detective and his gentle portrayals of French village life. As this is France, his talk was followed by aperitifs and dinner at the l'Auberge de la Castille, to which everyone was invited. With Charlie, my Jack Russell champing at the bit in the car, it was with great regret that I had to wend a wet and weary way back to Puylaroque. Next time, I shall send him to the kennels.

Sunday brought a complete change of genre with a cookery demonstration by Anne Dyson of the Greedy Goose Cookery School in Ambeyrac, in the Aveyron. The delicious canapés and appetizers that Anne so effortlessly prepared were testament to her culinary talents. Her beautiful Green Goose cookery book has provided a fitting thank you present for my friend who so generously lent me her house to be here.

After lunch by the lake in Parisot, ex-pat, humour-writer, Victoria Corby delighted us with her de la coeur account of her literary family and how she managed to gain the confidence to become a professional writer, despite the little voice over her shoulder telling her that she wouldn't be good enough. With three books published over a decade ago, Victoria has now ventured into the burgeoning ebook market by republishing them on Kindle. As she gets a significantly higher percentage of the revenue this way, I’m happy to say that all three are now downloaded to my Kindle Homepage. I look forward to them with great pleasure.

My final session at the festival was with the formidable Colette Barthes, a journalist with La Depeche du Midi and a committed human rights activist with Lutte pour la Justice, which fights for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States. Colette is one of those rare women who change the air in the molecules around them, strong, vibrant, fiercely political and an inspiration to all women, young and old alike. She writes in many genres, including the novel, but she is most well known for her research into the plight of the Spanish refugees of the Retirada and the European Jews who were brutally interned in the camp of Septfonds, not far from Parisot. Her book, L’exil et les Barbeles, is a work of great historical importance. Hers was an inspiring session.

After two stimulating days of literature, it was with some sadness that I packed my car to drive southwards back to St Girons. They always say that a change is as good as a rest, and what a glorious change it's been. I am so full of admiration for the committee of the Festival Litteraire de Parisot. They have achieved something very special and I know that it can only go from strength to strength. Who knows, one day Parisot may be mentioned in the same breath as Hay? Actually, maybe no. Small is beautiful and I would hate it to become just another commercial event hijacked by publishers and PR professionals. It's perfect as it is - name me another literary festival where you get tea and home made cakes thrown in, and all for nothing? Name me another festival, too, where you get to have lunch and dinner with the writers, like members of one big happy family? With so many new found friends, I feel like I've become part of this warm, welcoming literary family of Parisot and it's a real joy. My warmest thanks go to everybody involved. Bravo tous!

I knew, though, that I couldn’t leave this lovely region of France without visiting Septfonds. I wanted to pay tribute to the eighty-one Spaniards who lie in the Spanish cemetery there and also to visit the memorial at the Camp de Judes, in the nearby hameau of La Lande. I was moved to tears. These were young men who did not deserve to die on this side of the Pyrenees, buried in lines in numbered graves, like sardines in a tin. They had lost everything fighting Franco and now France, to its shame, took the only thing that they had left.

Septfonds is not far from St Antonin, where Charlotte Gray was partly filmed. I have always wanted to see the ancient bridge over the Aveyron over which the tanks rolled in on 11 November 1942. There is something special about great movie moments, as if they fill the space in our heads where words once were.

Reading the plaque by the bridge, I discovered that St Antonin hailed from Pamiers, in Ariege. When he tried to convert the heathens of our disorderly part of France, they chopped his head off and threw him unceremoniously into the River Ariege, from whence he was borne by angels to the Tarn, before being deposited, miraculously reassembled, here in the Aveyron. The town that takes his name has indeed been blessed. St Antonin is the most beautiful intact medieval village I have seen since visiting Verona last year. I know that it’s a cliché but it really is as though time has stood still.

I scuttled around its tiny streets like a detective on the prowl. Some of them were so narrow, if I spread my arms wide, I could have touched the walls on either side. Around every corner, in tiny passages and courtyards as well as on the main streets, there were grand portals and corbels and carved coats of arms. I am sure that these fine architectural details were only added once the Catholic zealots of St Antonin had prized the vast Cathar and Protestant wealth from the heretics in their midst. The town was rewarded with the grand title of St Antonin Noble Val, which just goes to show that you only have to scratch the surface in even the most picturesque French town to find a history of bitter conflict.

And with that thought in mind, I climbed back into my car and headed back to my work on the Resistance. Enough of books, barbed wire and beautiful places, I’ve spent too much time on blogging. Again! I don't know what other bloggers think but this new format drives me nuts. Sorry for the whinge but editing a blog post is now more time consuming than writing one, so it may be a while before I'm back. It’s time to get back to the grindstone at Bardies before the autumn runs away with me and my deadline disappears. How many days is it to Christmas? A bientot.












2 comments:

  1. Thanks for your write-up, Lola. It was good to meet you and I'm pleased to hear you had a good time. I agree, small is beautiful and we should try to keep it that way. Hope you can come to future events. In the meantime, good luck with your own book. Vanessa

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  2. It was a lovely weekend, wasn't it? I wish my French was better..I would have loved to hear what Colette shared. It's so frustrating to only understand part of something! I'm hooked on Bruno..have already read the two books I purchased. Did you stop at Notre Dame-des-Anges on your way to St. Antonin? It's the church where Charlotte Gray and Julian would rendezvous...lovely!

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