French Grey

Montmorillon is our nearest town. It seems typically French, an old core and modern industrial suburbs of identikit French streets. We went to the market in the old town this morning, lots of fresh vegetables and mushrooms, oysters, fresh cakes and noodles. A washed pale blue day hot after last night's thunder, the sky above the market square full of swifts.

There is a melancholy to France that I cannot place. Their streets seem gloomy sometimes, their cemeteries extensions of the streets or the other way round; their older pop music seems brushed with sadness and loss, their modern tat shops sell small cemetery plaques, as if this is a country obsessed with death. Yet this is not the real mood of place so where does it come from? My reaction to urban landscape - I will think on this further.

I had forgotten how heavily wooded it is here. The fields of golden stubble are surrounded by thick woods and the straight roads drive through mile after mile of forest. Sunlight through July leaves, dappled onto dry forest floor, bone-dry grasses. And yet the association of 'forestiére' sauces, creamy-rich with mushrooms or heavy with sausages of wild boar meat, red with tomatoes and blood.