Festival de Cultures Medievales et Occitanes

Despite both of us being quite tired, we popped out for a soiree in the 'temple' last night. Jan said that she would probably fall asleep, so the immediate problem would be to see who could stay awake the longest in order to wake the other one up. Anyway, William had earlier reminded us that there was an evening of baroque music in the village and he could see that we were in desperate need of a little education. 'Ensemble Vocal et Instrumental', 'Amaryllis', entertained about 50 people in this ancient church for about 1.5 hours with a selection of choral singing and music from Schutz, Kuhnau, Lorenzani and Bach. The evening was entitled 'Motets pour le temps de Paques', sacred choral music for Easter time. It wasn't what you would call jolly. There was a 14 member choir and 7 musicians, some of whom played ancient musical instruments. Whilst I don't have a trained ear, I know a bum note when I hear one, so I would have to say that the singers were quite a bit more talented than the band (you are such an uncouth yob - Ed) but having said that, neither of us fell asleep. This may of course have had something (a lot) to do with the hard-on-your-bum ancient wooden pews. Look, I have to be honest, this wasn't exactly up my street but I have to admire the fact that our little village of 300 souls has events of this type and, with a few of my brain cells wired differently, I might have enjoyed it more myself.

***

Sommieres beckoned this morning. It was the first day of their annual medieval festival which always adds a different and amusing festive air to the market. As you can see from the pictures above we all got into the 'spirit' of things. From top to bottom:

1 Elie, the bar owner, whispering sweet nothings in Tara's ear

2, 3, 4 & 5 The parade

6 Peter on his way to the bar

7 Peter with Jan after we had cleaned him up and he had offered to buy her a drink

8 Yours truly and Jan with Bryan and Gill in the background.