Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

Yesterday was the typical September day over here right up until the late afternoon when it became a little cloudy to the west but now it’s the miserable weather that you’d more typically associate with the west of Ireland rather than the south of France.

It’s become quite cool at night too.

Both aspects are unusual for here as ordinarily we’re running around in t-shirts from March to January.

If this is a sign of colder weather coming along this Winter maybe we’ll need to get some more snow chains. No rush yet though as the snow doesn’t arrive at the ski resorts ’til November.

From around June to August we expect to not be able to do anything that isn’t directly concerned with looking after guests. Non-essential administration just piles up, not to be looked at ’til September.

With the lower level of reservations in September, you’d expect that we’d be able to get stuck into that backlog of administration but that usually doesn’t happen ’til October as September represents the final month before the exam for my course so I end up needing to spend more time working on the Spanish which certainly makes up for any lower number of guests.

Also, some of that non-essential administration generally gets to move into the category of “essential” or at least “needing done” when it’s left undone for a few months which takes up the level of work required.

In fact, it’s not ’til well into October that we start to feel that we’re beginning to get on top of things again.

The profile of guests that we receive changes quite dramatically throughout the year but it’s September that tends to provide the most enjoyable mix for us.

July and August always seems filled with people racing from A to B and, on the whole, just using us as a waypoint in their travels. In the very peak periods we get a lot of the overflow from the beach resorts which means that there are a fair number of people staying with us who really wanted to be at the beach and this therefore represents the peak of our problem guests too.

Early September sees a dramatic change in the profile. For a start, that coincides with the Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival and we generally get some journalists staying with us then which always makes for a more interesting time. By mid-September we usually get some people staying for quite a long time using us as a base to explore the region. As we’ve fewer people staying at this time, we get to interact much more with those that are with us which makes for a more enjoyable time: we’ve already had the traditional storyteller from last week and this week it’s a historian who’s been filling in loads of gaps in our knowledge of the history of this area.

One of the more peculiar aspects of life here is that we are sick at almost exactly the same time every year.

Why that is, I don’t know but it’s been happening for four years now. Each June, we’re sick within a few days of the same time the year before, likewise each September.

In some ways, we can understand June. They’re spraying the fields at exactly the same time each June so we pretty much take it for granted that something in those sprays is causing it.

September is different though in that it’s in the midst of the grape harvest so there isn’t any spraying going on.

Weird, huh?

One thing’s for sure: the weather doesn’t mess around over here – it’s either one extreme or the other.

We’re just through a really major thunder and lightening storm the like of which you just don’t see in Northern Ireland.

All being well normal south of France weather will be resumed tomorrow with the sun and cloudless skies that usually characterise September here.