September meanderings

We usually go on holiday in May and September.  This was never intended to be any kind of ghastly cheesy reference to our age gap; if it were, it would by now be irrelevant, since frankly I am really something rather more like a somewhat frazzled and dishevelled past-its-best late July pushing August, while Tom is a generally pretty mellow and fruitful, but with sometimes a blustery chill and days getting shorter, late October with an intimation of Guy Fawkes' Night.

But no, from the time when I was free from the northern hemisphere's academic year, I've always favoured May for getting away.  Twixt summer and spring, the best of both, and since coming here, although  I've become loosely re-aligned with school/university terms, the generous allocation of French public holidays in the month generally ensures the possibility of a long weekend off at least, and since its our wedding anniversary too, there are enough reasons to be off gadding.

September is Tom's birthday month, it is off-season and quieter but most things are still just about open, the mornings can be fresh but the days are often bright, the light is lovely and the colours are beginning to grow richer,

and since my main paid work is supposed to be linked to the university rather than the school year - thereby giving it kind of gravitas and academic credibility and also enabling my retirees to take advantage of off-season rates and recover from the onslaught and trauma of their grandchildren's school holidays - I get a much appreciated extension on summer's lease.

So these markers in our year please us well.  Yet in both of them there is an element of leave-taking.

In the May evasion it is less poignant; the year is opening up into the even plod of summer, the predictable length of days, the temperatures sometimes tiresomely hot but usually never less than ambient.  Nevertheless, I do feel a degree of regret that the spring, with its wild flurry and urgency, its capricious vibrancy and youthful haste, is levelling out into summer, which is somehow lacking in movement compared with its forerunner. and for us, though paid work ceases, summer is often quite a busy time, with jobs around the place to be done, and sometimes visitors..

The September break I look forward to quite immoderately, although I know it is an ending, a door closing.

It is our reward for summer's work, our laying by for winter to come.  It is a time for idleness and an enjoyable melancholy, for reflection and folding away,  When we take off on it, I am wholeheartedly committed to relishing every moment of it, to drinking and savouring the last of summer to its lees before turning to and treading out the new stuff, resolutely turning my back on duties and obligations past and present.

And I do.  We luxuriate and please ourselves, lounge and walk

and eat and drink and read and soak up the last of the sun's rays on the warm unravelling edges of the land.

It truly is wonderful.  But then, somewhere after half way through, there comes a tipping point, and I know that it's time to turn about, time to go back and start putting things together for the last quarter of the year, to take stock and make stores and get ourselves ready.  And also that it really won't be bad.  At home there will be that special lowering light that dances through the thinning leaves and into the front windows and scatters over the wall and floors and surfaces and fills the rooms with life.  That there will be apples and sloes still in the hedges, that there will be new books to study and cheerful meetings and warm evenings, and, all being well an Indian summer which is always  better than the first one. No, it really won't be bad at all.

As we say goodbye to our new-found friends at Kerbiriou, saying that we might come back for a weekend later in the year, maybe to eat kig ar farz and to see if the oysters really are better in the winter, we can't be sure, but in the spring we w'll come, for sure, Rilke's lovely lines are going through my head - for Rilke has been one of the bittersweet and beautiful fruits to come out of this summer -

'Lord, it is time. Your summer was superb.
Lay your shadows on the sundials,
and in the meadows let the winds go free.'

~~~

(All the photos taken in and around where we were staying.)