A couple of years back, Uncle Arthur's house-hunting friends came looking in a rainy autumn week, like this one is turning out to be. They dismissed Aquitaine as grey, flat, featureless. They hated it, they said and wondered how anyone could live in such a 'desolate' place. It reminded me of how I felt once on a drive through the muddy fields of Picardy on a rainy day, and felt sorry for them, as the land had hidden itself until they had gone.
It is such a subtle landscape, huge and rolling, from the River Isle in the North to the Pyrenees, from the Atlantic to the Massif Centrale; its waves of hill and woodland need a teasing oblique light to show it off. The flat white heat of summer and the bleached out grey of winter rain often hides it from the brief visitor. It needs the nacreous light of spring when sunlight filters through the evaporating winter wet, or the Monbazaillac wine light of autumn to bring out the clear views across miles of rolling blue hills, fields and woods.

Once again we have had a stunning autumn. During a September heatwave, trees and vines faded and turned until a sudden surprise frost in early October tripped the change. Sumac, maples and poplars have blazed a trail across the countryside, chequered every so often by mottled rows of vines. The typical Lot et Garonne stone houses, longères, lie baked about the land like baguettes and in their gardens ornamental trees like liquiambers and kaki, (persimmons) entrance us. The sleepy green rivers have cleared to a black shine.

It is all so familiar now, after almost 6 years. Familiar, yet still difficult. Communication, for example.
Not so much the speaking with, although I shall never master the bavardage, I fear. But when I walk each week with the Randonneurs, I can at least follow the ripple of chatter that flitters from subject to subject and always comes back to food - how to cook a potimarron, one's favourite bit of a duck, which mushrooms are best to pick and fry. As Pierrette stoops to pick and eat a fallen medlar, Marie Claire injects one of her attempts to raise people's political consciousness. Last week her message was again environmental, the disappearance of bees, the use of pesticides on our food. Lips are pursed, heads shaken and it is not just Janine, an organic Vigneron, who murmurs concern and agreement.
Fast food is bemoaned, and obese grandchildren who sit in front of computers, (ahem), who text as grandpa is talking to them... I am asked if it is true that some British children eat school lunch in a PUB?!?
I try to explain about costs, the defunct school meals service, parents who have not learned how to cook... Yes, they sigh, it is going that way here too. People no longer know how cheese should taste, they buy the plastic-wrapped stuff in the Supermarché.. .

We pass some sloes and I explain how to make sloe gin. I am quizzed minutely, how much sugar? How long do you leave it? Why do you wait for a frost before you pick them? There is some scepticism as gin is not often drunk here. But they love their prunes in Armagnac, figs in cognac.
So the following week, as we meet at Monteton for a lovely walk around its ancient church on a hill top, through prune orchards, and since we park in an idyllic spot overlooking the Dropt valley, I produce a picnic. - Home-made-ginger-biscuits-thank-you-Delia, and a bottle of sloe gin from 2007. I am deluged with requests for both recipes, Rule Britannia.

Other communications are more fraught. The letters that arrive demanding access to inspect things. - fosse, meters, overhanging trees. Are they requests? Demands? Orders? Are we in trouble? Can I sort out the ne-que and aucuns and malgrés and donts (so many meanings, that 'dont') to decide? Is it in the imperative or do I spot a softer subjunctive mood? The signing off is no more helpful, with its flowery sentiments:

Veuillez agréer, Monsieur, Madame, l'assurance de mes salutations distinguées,
or, Je vous prier d'agréer mes sentiments respecteaux.. Yes, yes, what's wrong with Yours Sincerely?

and this ps. from the EDF meter reader:
Information for happy, fortunate dog-owners:
Your companion is most certainly not bad, and as we wish to continue to have good relations with him, we advise you, to cover every eventualitie, to maintain the distance between us during our passage. Thank you for your understanding.

My understanding, shut the dog up.

And the phone! The cold calls from utilities companies that might be an important query; by the time you realise it is not, you're caught. The artisans calling to say the washing machine's ready/ he can't come tomorrow, so when..?/I'm at Sauvetat with your parcel, how do I get chez vous?, all delivered in an elided stream of rapid, strongly accented syllables.
Sometimes, still, I weep, thinking we will never cope, fear making some total error with father-in-law's medical appointments and instructions, or a complete, illegal, misunderstanding about tax. Will we be hauled off to Devil's Island for some bureaucratic misunderstanding?

A little image for you as I sign off to make P a cuppa. Lunchtime last week, a lay-by, a sudden shower. Two lorries, head to tail, one with one of those hydraulic tailgates backed up to the other, a tarpaulin spread from one roof to another, dipped headlights on.
On the tailgate, a table, with tablecloth, around which sat four drivers, one serving up something, one cutting bread, all laughing.
Vive la France.