Parade

So for once it was the weekend and we were both at home! We celebrated by going to Le Clos de Mauzac for dinner last night. It was going to be a dîner à deux, but we bumped in to Monsieur le maire and his partner, who were just sitting down, so we shared a table with them and had a very enjoyable evening. I have to record that the tomato tarte tatin with goat's cheese mousse was one of the best things I have ever eaten.

During the evening, the mayor told me that he had exceptionally decided to pay the swimming pool lifeguards for this weekend (normally the pool closes promptly on 31 August). "Since I'm paying him, you'd better go, whatever the weather!" So I did, despite the fact that it was blowing a gale, to the extent that the pool had waves. Well, once you're in the water, the wind is no longer a factor ... it's just rather chilly when you get out! Not surprisingly, I had the pool to myself.

This afternoon, we finally got around to seeing the Max Savy exhibition in Carcassonne. It's a collection of his paintings that he left to the city of Carcassonne in his will (he died in 2010 at the age of 92). It was lovely to see these large paintings -- many of them are in the book Le long chemin, but when the painting is a metre across, nothing beats seeing it life-size. There were no signs forbidding photography, so I sneakily took a few photos.

The subject here is not really typical of his work -- born in Albi, he spent the last 40 years of his life living in a chateau in the high Corbières and mainly painted rural scenes -- but the colours are. The yellow is officially known as le jaune Savy, and he used a lot of red and ochre too. He's on record as disliking blue. You can read a hagiography of him here (in French) and see some more of his pictures here. My spare blip is la butte de Villedaigne -- an odd outcrop which I drive past every time I go to Narbonne.