Vernissage

We went to the Centre des Arts in Fabrezan this evening, for the opening of a multi-artist exhibition. The main reason we went was because I had noticed that Christine Drouillard was one of the artists. I bought three of her small square prints in Albas last year, and when I saw them on the wall immediately thought, "I should have bought six! Or maybe nine!" I hoped she would be at the opening, and she was. "I can send you some photos of the petits carrés," she said. "Pick the ones you want, and I'll bring them when I come to take the exhibition down." Deal! She had some large monochrome prints on display this time that looked like seascapes or foggy landscapes. I really liked those too, but ... no more wall space. I asked her how she did them: "I take photos of walls, floors, bits of plastic rubbish, any kind of object really, and then layer them and play with the transparency." I love her work.

It was so hot in there that we didn't stay long. It was hot outside too, but at least there was a bit of a breeze, so we sat on the terrace of the neighbouring cafe with a beer. Here we bumped into H, a German friend who lives in Fabrezan. Despite that we hadn't seen her for a while. Last time I saw her was at yoga a couple of months ago. She told me then that she'd had a car accident, but I didn't find out more because she only stayed about twenty minutes and then left, obviously exhausted. It was a fairly drastic accident -- she can't remember anything about it, but had broken bones and serious enough concussion that four months later she is still having memory and other problems. We sat and chatted with her for a while. She was clearly struggling a bit, but she still speaks three languages.

Back home it was Belgian frites night. The bar was buzzing, but we weren't really in the mood for that, so I bought a "small" portion of chips (more than we could finish between us), and we sat in air-conditioned peace to eat them with a glass of rosé and ice cubes.

Oh -- today marks 28 years since we left the UK for France. Still no regrets!