Sunday morning, close to noon, my portable rings. OK, I admit, I was still upstairs in my jammies and all the shutters were closed. Anyone passing by our house would know I had not yet started my day. A familiar cheerful voice speaks to me in French, with a delightful Italian cadence. It's my friend and property manager, Armando. "Suzanne, have you had a nice sleep?" he asks, "Odile and I would like for you to join us for a little promenade this afternoon. Stop by our house around 14h and we'll have a little coffee before we go.”
How could I resist? I ran downstairs to eat breakfast, lunch, whatever might be available in the fridge and to make sure Emily knew she would have to be dressed for a hike within the next two hours. We would be walking au fond du sac. Just after the church bells anounced the 2 o'clock hour, we arrived at the Perrone door.
"Au fond du sac" I repeated as Armando explained that we would have a short drive to our starting point and that we would take along Emily's bike. Of course, I thought, we are going to walk through "the deep part of the sack." Instantly my brain made the connection to our American use of the French "cul de sac" (bottom/butt of the sack, or dead-end loop in a subdivision) and I contemplated its phonetic relation to the French expression "cul sec," meaning "bottoms up" or "down the hatch!”
Maybe now you get a hint of how exhausting it is for an adult brain to function immersed in a language not ones own...I see in my Word Reference online dictionary there are many interesting combinations using the word cul; I make a mental note to go back and study some of the ones that may come in handy next time I need to sling a few words...
Ok, hit the rewind button; back to the story about our promenade. After a pleasant visit over coffee and a slice of Gâteau Moelleux aux Marrons that Odile had prepared the day before, we joined up with another voisine and her two children. We now had four adults, three children, a bike, a trike and a kid-porting backpack loaded into Armando's car.
The weather could not have been more cooperative; plenty of sunshine, blue sky, and mid-fifties temperatures. We stayed out until close to 18h, strolling on a delightful loop through a deep area of vineyards, stopping for a brief rest, past an occasional old stone farmhouse and a few barking dogs. A great time was had by all. I hope you will enjoy a few of the photos I shot along the way. I'd love to read your comments!
