Harvest

Today we went to help A and C pick their olives. It was a sunny day but with a chill wind, so we wrapped up well. The olive picking was not all that rewarding as the crop had been ravaged by olive fly, and much of the fruit had fallen off the trees. Most of them yielded just a couple of handfuls of pea-sized olives. The few trees with a lot on were a real pain to pick as the olives were so small and scattered, each one plucked off individually from branches waving about in the wind.

So our picking was not exactly cost-effective, even though it was free -- by the time A has paid for the pathetically small crop to be milled, it will probably be more expensive than buying ready-made oil! Still, it made a nice change to be out in the sun and wind all day. The five of us ended up spending almost all day on it, but that included a couple of hours at lunchtime sitting around the table in the bergerie eating ham and sausage and drinking red wine. It was surprisingly snug in there with the little cast-iron stove burning next to the table.

In other news ... if you follow my blips for long enough, you're certain to encounter excellent musicians you've never heard of. Last night we went to see Rocío Marquez at the Centre Culturel. If you are interested in flamenco you may well have heard of her as she is extremely well known and very talented. I have to say that we both find a little flamenco singing goes a very long way, but it's very clear even to non-experts that she's in a different league to 99% of flamenco singers -- who often sound as if they are just shouting incoherently, while she has wonderful control of nuances and expression (even if I still couldn't understand most of the words). The guitarist was fantastic too (the same one as on the video I linked to above). Even the hand-clappers were above average :)

It's so long since we booked for this that we'd completely forgotten that there was a first half, a young cellist called called Matthieu Saglio, who is French but lives in Spain. How interesting can a solo cellist playing in semi-darkness be? Very, as it turned out. He has amazing technique, and almost all the pieces he played were his own compositions, apart from a swift little bit of Bach as an encore. I think I had never registered before how versatile a cello is. I guessed a range of three octaves, but it turns out it's nearly five. He also used a sampler to record and then play back short sequences, creating mesmerising layers of sound. I enjoyed it so much I bought his CD.