A Year in Provence

by Peter Mayle

There were even cases of the ultimate blasphemy, when vines had been grubbed up to make way for tennis courts.

Walking in the hills, I was often able to smell a house before I could see it, because of the scent of woodsmoke coming from an invisible chimney. It is one of the most primitive smells in life, and consequently extinct in most cities, where fire regulations and interior decorators have combined to turn fireplaces into blocked-up holes or self-consciously lit ‘architectural features’.

The fireplace in Provence is still used – to cook on, to sit round, to warm the toes and please the eye – and fires are laid in the early morning and fed throughout the day with scrub oak from the Lubéron or beech from the foothills of Mont Ventoux.

A tray of drinks was brought out, with pastis for the men and chilled, sweet muscat wine for the women, and we were caught in a crossfire of noisy complaints about the weather.

Plates were then wiped with pieces torn from the two-foot loaves in the middle of the table, and the next course came out.

We had entire breasts, entire legs, covered in a dark, savoury gravy and surrounded by wild mushrooms.

We ate the green salad with knuckles of bread fried in garlic and olive oil,

With the coffee, a number of deformed bottles were produced which contained a selection of locally made digestifs.

The people who work on the land are more likely to eat well at noon and sparingly in the evening, a habit which is healthy and sensible and, for us, quite impossible.

It must have something to do with the novelty of living in the middle of such an abundance of good things to eat, and among men and women whose interest in food verges on obsession.

Butchers, for instance, are not content merely to sell you meat. They will tell you, at great length, while the queue backs up behind you, how to cook it, how to serve it and what to eat and drink with it.

We were directed towards a butcher in the old part of town who was reputed to have the master’s touch and to be altogether treès sérieux.

He puffed up with indignation, and began to sharpen a large knife so energetically that we stepped back a pace. Did we realize, he said, that we were looking at an expert, possibly the greatest pebronata authority in the Vaucluse?

By now, Massot was in a talkative mood. He lived alone, he told me, and company was scarce in the winter. He had spent his life in the mountains, but maybe it was time to move into the village, where he could be among people.

didn’t care. I liked him, and I had a feeling that he would be a rich source of fascinating and highly suspect information.

all I needed now was a navigator to steer me through the murky waters of French bureaucracy, which in its manifold subtleties and inconveniences can transform a molehill of activity into a mountain of frustration.

The two areas of endeavour in which France leads the world – bureaucracy and gastronomy – had combined to put us in our place.

We had the Lubéron to ourselves, eerie and beautiful, mile after mile of white icing marked only by occasional squirrel and rabbit tracks crossing the footpaths in straight and purposeful lines.

The hunters, so evident in warmer weather with their weaponry and their arsenals of salami, baguettes, beer, Gauloises and all the other necessities for a day out braving nature in the raw, had stayed in their burrows.

had cleared the access routes to essential services – butcher, baker, épicerie and café – and small knots of villagers stood in the sunshine congratulating each other on their fortitude in the face of calamity.

It was startling to see and hear the joyful ferocity with which the three masons pulverized everything within sledgehammer range.

What we couldn’t do, because of the limited cooking facilities, was to celebrate Sunday as it should always be celebrated in France, with a long and carefully judged lunch.

and came to depend more and more on the Gault-Millau guide. The Michelin is invaluable, and nobody should travel through France without it, but it is confined to the bare bones of prices and grades and specialities. Gault-Millau gives you the flesh as well. It will tell you about the chef – if he’s young, where he was trained; if he’s established, whether he’s resting on his past success or still trying hard. It will tell you about the chef’s wife, whether she is welcoming or glaciale. It will give you some indication of the style of the restaurant, and if there’s a view or a pretty terrace. It will comment on the service and the clientele, on the prices and the atmosphere. And, often in great detail, on the food and the wine list. It is not infallible, and it is certainly not entirely free from prejudice, but it is amusing and always interesting and, because it is written in colloquial French, good homework for novices in the language like us.

In his unhurried and stately way, the old man made his rounds, sitting down from time to time for a chat with his clients.

The kitchen bell had stopped clanging and Madame came out, smiling and rosy-faced from the heat of the ovens, to ask us if we had eaten well. She looked like a woman of sixty. The two of them stood together, his hand on her shoulder, while she talked about the antique furniture, which had been her dowry, and he interrupted. They were happy with each other and they. loved their work, and we left the restaurant feeling that old age might not be so bad after

But, despite their genial contempt for punctuality and their absolute refusal to use the telephone to say when they were coming or when they weren’t, we could never stay irritated with them for long. They were always disarmingly cheerful, they worked long and hard when they were with us, and their work was excellent.

The dogs enjoyed themselves by getting in everyone’s way, dodging kicks and tangling themselves in the twine.

There were four litres of wine and an enormous pile of the sugared slices of fried bread called tranches dorées, dark gold in colour and crisp and delicious to taste.

He smiled and tapped the side of his nose with a finger and then, as though it was a small matter hardly worth mentioning, he asked if we would like 250 asparagus plants put in while we still had the use of the tractor and the men.

by the time the truffle reaches its spiritual home in the kitchens of Bocuse or Troisgros the price will probably have doubled.

Chez Michel is the village bar of Cabrières and the headquarters of the boules club, and not sufficiently upholstered or pompous to attract too much attention from the Guide Michelin inspectors. Old men play cards in the front; clients of the restaurant eat very well in the back. The owner cooks, Madame his wife takes the orders, members of the family help at table and in the kitchens. It is a comfortable neighbourhood bistrot with no apparent intention of joining the culinary merry-go-round which turns talented cooks into brand names and pleasant restaurants into temples of the expense account.

All good Sundays include a trip to the market, and we were in Coustellet by eight.

We watched as one old man sliced a baguette lengthways with a wooden-handled pocket knife and spread on fresh goat’s cheese in a creamy layer before pouring himself a glass of red wine from the litre bottle that would keep him going until lunchtime.

The bakery was crowded and noisy, and smelt of warm dough and the almonds that had gone into the morning’s cakes. While we waited, we remembered being told that the French spend as much of their income on their stomachs as the English do on their cars and stereo systems, and we could easily believe it.

He reeled it off with the mock weariness of the indispensable executive, and he was welcome to every second of it.

We dismounted and walked stiff-legged to the pool, discarding clothes as we went, and dived in. It was like going to heaven. Lying in the sun afterwards with a glass of wine we decided that cycling would be a regular part of our summer lives. It was, however, some time before we could face the saddles without flinching.