Full house

A culturally varied weekend. On Friday evening we went with some friends to another of the events in the Printemps du Jazz in Conilhac. I took the point and shoot again, but it was very crowded and we were a long way from the stage, so I didn't bother taking photos. It was another very enjoyable evening: a delicious daube cathare, followed by the Gérard Poncin trio. He's a regular at the autumn festival, and when I last saw him a few years ago I wasn't that keen. But either he's improved or my tastes have changed because the trio (later joined by saxophonist Jean-Michel Cabrol) was very good.

Despite living in a rural area we do have quite a few cultural options on our doorstep. On Saturday evening less than 10 minutes' drive took us to the barn-like Centre Culturel. The architecture is ugly, to put it mildly, but that's less obvious in the dark. The play was Le Repas des Fauves, which won three Molières (a prestigious French theatre prize). We go to the cinema a lot, but it's rare for us to go to the theatre, in fact it must be decades since I last went to a conventional "fourth wall" play like this.

The play involves a group of bourgeois friends dining together during the German occupation. Two SS officers are assassinated in the street outside, and their jolly evening is interrupted by an SS officer demanding as a "favour" to the host, a book dealer whom he knows, that they should designate two of the party to act as hostages (who will be shot if the assassin doesn't give himself up). The huis clos which follows is predictable in many ways, and the SS officer is a caricature, but the acting was excellent, and there was a surprising amount of very black humour. The packed house appreciated it, with many indrawn breaths at some of the more audacious propositions by characters trying to save their own skins at the expense of others.

Afterwards I fumbled around in the flowerbed with the tripod. I really do need more practice at night photography!