French Sojourn
Although very much alone in the UK, my mother, God bless her, fed me opportunities from afar. She was Canadian by birth, but was an Anglophile, and her network, somehow, extended to the parents of Scotsman, Neil McKay-Scoby. Neil had secured a job on a French vineyard, and I was invited to join him. It was near the village of Saint Remy in the Rhone Valley, near where Vincent Van Goh once lived. My bike and I took the boat from Folkstone to Calais. (The channel tunnel was still sometime in the future), and a train to Paris.
One experience defined my feeling about Paris. At a telephone booth, I was failing miserably in an attempt to call Neil in Saint Remy. This must have been apparent to a young couple near-by, and they came to my rescue, putting their own money in the slot, and making the connection for me. I may forget the Arch de Triumph, the Eiffel Tower and the River Seine, but will never forget that act of kindness.
I took an overnight train to Avignon. Then rode forty kilometers, to arrive work-ready, at the vineyard. Neil had arrived three days earlier, and there was also an Australian who have been there a couple of months. The vineyard was owned by a British airline pilot who had found the good life in Southern France. He had a beautiful girl-friend who prepared beautiful meals. Work was a secondary consideration. The vineyard was tiny and two hours of work each day was considered to be adequate.
Saint. Remy. Ah Saint Remy: Think stone buildings, outdoor cafés, and rustics playing pétanque. On the second day, after our two hours of unhurried work, the vineyard owner declared that we were going to a café. That is, he and three lads. His girl-friend stayed home, presumably to make it beautiful and to prepare a beautiful meal. Café dining at Saint Remy, and getting slightly tipsy, was delightful. This relaxed lifestyle was seductive. I could feel comfort and ease drawing me in, making me not want to leave, as it had done to the Australian, and, Neil confessed, it was doing to him.
Once again, I determined that I must make a bold step. I loaded up my bike, and set off early the next morning searching for proper work. I called at farms, trying to communicate with next-to-no French language.
I’m sure they understood that I was looking for work, but the moment they started speaking, I was completely lost.
Eventually I came to the outskirts of the town of Carpentras and spied a building with a sign saying Bureaux de Information. Aha, I thought: “a visitors information centre, or a citizens advice bureau”.
It was neither. It was the home of a main frame computer. These were the days when we believed that the future for computing would be large, shared installations.
The receptionist was puzzled by my lame attempt at French, and enlisted some back room staff to see if they could understand what I was about. Someone had the bright idea to call Paul Claude Rebinaires, an artist who lived near by, and spoke English. Paul arrived in his Citroen. He was an older man, stooped and smoking a roll-your-own. He ascertained that I was looking for work, and took me under his wing.
Paul’s home was two storied, large, white and packed with art. The swimming pool was empty and grounds were becoming overgrown.
Paul found some work for me, helping clear a section next door for his brother-in-law. He took it upon himself to provide me with gourmet meals. Yet again, I found myself in luxury, when I sought austerity. I explained that I needed to get a proper job, and that I had a friend in Saint Remy, who also needed work.
Paul went off in his Citroen, and then came back an hour later, to tell me that he had found a job for my friend and I at a vineyard called Grangeneuve (New Barn) near the village of Jonquieres.
Grangeneuve
At Grangeneuve, Neil and I moved into a stable-like room with glass doors. There was little privacy, but that seemed not to matter, when no one speaks your language. Grangeneuve occupied seventy hectares, but there was no sign of mechanical harvesting. We hand-picked the grapes into buckets.
My workmates were mainly from Morocco. The work routine was completely different from New Zealand or Britain. Rather than taking smoko breaks mid- morning and afternoon, you worked four hours, then stopped for an hour and a half for a communal lunch and possibly a nap. Then you returned to work for another four hours. I was surprised how easy it was to adapt.
We did not, however adopt the typical French breakfast. We stuck to our porridge habit.
Recently French men and women took to the streets to protest the raising of their retirement age from 62 to 64. Perhaps their need to retire early is a consequence of their breakfast fare: Low fibre bread or pastry and a tiny super strong, super sweet coffee. This fast-burn rocket-fuel on an empty stomach, may be shortening their useful working lives.
After my lonely time in Britain, I felt euphoric living and working in France, and the more euphoric I behaved, the more stolid Neil became. I was getting on his nerves, and being dour Scot was his way of pulling me down.
Part of our pay was a daily bottle of wine. I drank very little of this, and Neil drank the rest.
At the end of the harvest, there was a big feast, and then we rode our bikes to Paul’s place. Neil would be returning to the UK the next day, and I would leave the day after that. That night, Neil and Paul stayed up late, drinking.
The next day was Sunday, and I had a plan to get up early to ride off to see the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, (fountain of Vaucluse). Neil was still snoring when I was ready to set off. Then I thought “No. This is an opportunity to redress our festering angst.”
I woke Neil, and invited him to join me.
We rode in silence, eventually arrived at the village of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse village. At its centre was an ornate fountain, but it was nothing to write home about.
A sparkling river coursed by the village, and we rode up-stream along its banks.
By and by we arrived at something extraordinary. At the base of a limestone cliff emerged a large dome of aquamarine water. It was totally unexpected. We said nothing, but moved to our own separate vantage points to view this wonder. For me, a sense of reconciliation accompanied this shared experience.
Neil returned to his family’s farm in Scotland, and I made my way back to England, where I saw out autumn helping selectively harvest timber in a deciduous forest adjacent to a picture-perfect English village. (Thanks mum. That opportunity came via her also.)
P.S. If you want to save yourself a plane ticket, and the crush of what has become a big tourist attraction, The Source of the Riwaka is the same phenomena as Fountaine-de-Vaucluse, but smaller.