We have 100,000 welcomes for visitors – but they can forget coming into our homes
THE sun was still splitting the stones last Saturday evening at seven o’clock when ten of us, Irish and English, met up for drinks outside Le Bigourdain. The ‘Bigou’, as it affectionately is known, is one of the social hubs of Vicen-Bigorre, a town of 5,200 people in the Hautes-Pyrénées department of southwest France, in the historical province of Aquitaine.
It was my fourth annual visit, to stay with friends, Karl and Jane. Karl first came to Vic on a student exchange when he was 15 and fell in love with it. Save for a couple of years when his own children were young, he has been back every year since, because he ended up having a second family network there, a French ‘mammy’ who passed away a couple of years ago, and ‘siblings’ to whom he remains close.
In 2015, he realised a lifelong dream when he and Jane bought a beautiful holiday home there, an oasis of calm just off the main street that sits on an acre of land and has the most welcoming swimming pool imaginable. It is one of the happiest places I know, always ringing to the sound of splashing water, the lovely glug of a wine glass being refreshed, music from Édith Piaf and Charles Trenet, and lots of laughter.
Embrace
Completely contrary to the unwarranted stereotype of the unfriendly French, Vic could not be more welcoming. On my first visit to the Bigou each year, the owner Jean-Michel greets me with a cheery ‘bonjour, Philippe!’, a warm embrace, and the inevitable kiss on both cheeks. His mother, Juju, kisses all of us every time we pop in, which is a lot – and, at the end of the night, quite at odds with some pubs here I have frequented for years, I always am offered a glass of Calvados, the apple brandy from Normandy, on the house.
Usually, I visit in August or September, but this year I was invited for the Bastille Day festivities, and it proved a memorable weekend. When we finished those drinks, we ambled 200 metres up the cordoned-off main street to the covered market. I only ever have seen it set out with stalls selling meat, poultry, cheese, fish, homemade cassoulet and all the delicacies France has to offer. On Saturday night, it was transformed, with fairy lights suspended from the ceiling, long rows of trestle tables inside and out on the banks of the stream that runs through town, and stalls where you queued for your food.
Unlike St Patrick’s Day, which celebrates a saint and not nationhood, Bastille Day celebrates the birth of modern France, and embraces all aspects of French culture, especially food. This event, Les Tablées de Vic, brings together chefs from Paris, Toulouse and Bordeaux who each provide one of the five courses, and feed 1,000 people for €25 a head (actually, because we were a party of ten, we got a discount and paid only €22). On the Michelin-star menu were ceviche of sea bream with plums; duck with foie gras; trout with leeks; veal tartare (I passed, because I don’t do veal); and a chocolate ganache with raspberries and fennel flowers. We popped a tenner each in a kitty and that kept us in wine and pitchers of beer all night.
As we ate, it got dark. A brass band incongruously played the like of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida before we all went outside at 11.30 for fireworks, then danced the night away to a DJ. I can’t tell you how much fun it was, and a privilege to be there for it.
What really struck me was how important the food was. If we are honest, most of our celebrations revolve around drink and while it is an important component in France too, all we heard the next day from anyone we bumped into was comments on the food – even the locals, it seemed, were not too gone on the veal tartare, but everything else was deemed un grand succès.
Fleeting
What was doubly obvious, though, was the fact that this was an important community event, one that has grown so large that it actually was on the Friday night too, with a grand finale on Sunday afternoon at the local rugby club, who are champions of their division this year.
My visit this year was a fleeting one, flying into Lourdes on the Friday afternoon and leaving on Monday morning, but I have stayed for longer on previous trips and have been invited to people’s homes for dinner. In Vic, any friend of Karl is a friend of theirs too.
I have passable French, insofar as I have a decent vocabulary, but my verbs are disgraceful (I know I’m saying things like, ‘ah yes, I will see you there yesterday’), but everyone is relaxed and no one pulls you up on it. They’re just anxious you are well fed and watered. A couple of years ago, I brought a bottle of good wine to Christian and Corinne’s for dinner, and he insisted I take it home and enjoy it myself. Lest I be affronted, he showed me his wine cellar; he had enough to survive Armageddon. When I played pétanque for the first time, against Karl and his ‘brother-in-law’ André, and won, I have the sneaky suspicion I might have been allowed to. The guest in a French home is there to be honoured.
And it reminded me that for all our reputation here as hospitable and welcoming, we seldom invite strangers to our homes. Over the years, I have worked with English people who question why this is. They have any number of invitations for drinks and even for meals out, but sometimes they would love what we all love, a snoop around a house to see how the Irish actually live, but it is an ambition often thwarted.
Judged
Maybe we all are just too used to the old concept of the good room that belies the chaos in the kitchen, and feel that we somehow will be judged, when all anyone really wants to experience is homeliness, not to run a finger along a counter checking for dust.
French houses can be a mad riot of flowery flock wallpapers and furniture handed down from grandma, but that is the charm – I don’t need to travel 1,000 kilometres to see another clinical kitchen with an island that looks like an operating table, reflective presses with concealed handles, and 36 halogen spots that dim down to a perennial dusk.
What I want to see in France is France, and what visitors here want to see is Ireland.
So next time I meet anyone from another country who is staying here for a while, I’m going to have them round, even if it’s only for a bowl of pasta and a slice of Vienetta.
Sitting around with the French last weekend, at the pavement tables in the Bigou and the trestle tables in the marché, and in previous years in their homes, made me vow one thing. The hundred thousand welcomes here should not and will not stop at my front door. The only welcome visitors want is the one at your kitchen table; the other 99,999 are pretty meaningless in comparison.