The whole question about Mèze being our favourite town in the south France does not really stand up to scrutiny, but then 'favourite things" are completely random irrational choices, as Rogers and Hammerstein asserted so succinctly in their seminal work on the matter back in the mid 1960s. I mean, in terms of the psychology of making choices, you simply have to stand back in awe at their grasp of the essentially random, surreal nature of human preferences:
"Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things"
No less impressive are their concluding remarks on the benefits of 'favourite things' in terms of well-being and mental health.
"When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favourite things
And then I don't feel so bad"
Quite clearly the duo were Millennials before their time, promulgating the qualities of being a total snowflake well before the notion became one of the defining qualities of our age.
All this means I feel under no compunction to explain why Meze is our favourite town in the south of France despite there being scores of more winsome candidates, I can simply say, when I am feeling sad merely recalling its delights cheers me up. Joking aside, perhaps that really is the simple truth of the matter.
We are very confused about when we first visited the place, uncertain if it was in the late nineties on an Easter trip to Languedoc or some years later when we rented a house one summer in Quarante, a wine village in the low hills a little to the north of the Canal du Midi. Whenever it was, we have a clear recollection of staring in an 'immobliers' window down by the port thinking the small flats overlooking the harbour or unrenovated village houses in the old town were quite inexpensive.
Maybe when the kids fly the nest we could downsize in England and buy a second property here, we conjectured. We knew lots of people who had done exactly that, and like many others browsed estate agent windows in every sunny place we visited.
However Mèze felt different, it really was quite affordable and the location was great, the closest point on the Mediterranean from the Channel ports, a three hour drive from the Costa Brava and day's journey from Italy. The town itself felt authentic not some soul-less tourist trap, it felt vibrant, the area as much a centre for wine-makers and 'huitre' producteurs as a holiday destination.
In the end we never did acquire our 'place in the sun'. Cameron put the kibosh on our more ambitious retirement plans. Gill was first to be threatened with redundancy as local authority budgets were slashed. She survived the 'downsizing' though her work load doubled. My turn came the following year in 2012, as austerity squeezed small colleges and forced them into mergers. Faced with a demotion and a significant salary cut I opted for voluntary redundancy. It ended our dream of buying that house in Méze. Most of my redundancy settlement went into buying our first moho, it turned out we were destined to become grey-haired wanderers not ex-pats. It probably suited us better anyway.
Nevertheless we still look upon Mèze fondly and whenever we use the A75 to head south make time for a visit. There always seems to be something happening, whether it's the weekly market which is epic in scale or some one off event. By accident we were in town on the day of the last Presidential elections. Older residents dressed-up for the occasion, looking well turned out when turning out to vote is not something we do. It gives real a sense of gravitas to the occasion. Impressively, across Languedoc every single poster of Marie le Pen had been neatly defaced with a Hitler moustache, most had been annotated too. My French is minimal but I got the gist, one or two of the comments were merely insulting, most were obscene.
On another visit we stumbled across Mèze carnival. We only pedalled in from Loupian to have a morning coffee by the harbour. Everything seemed quite normal until two yellow painted bearded men arrived dressed as characters from The Mask on the top half, and from the waist down in suspenders and fishnets. They were very friendly, I got a big kiss planted on each cheek from both of them. Things became a bit strange after that, culminating in a long procession in fancy dress headed by an enormous wooden figure of a bull, lugged around the town by what appears to be the local rugby team. A mock fight ensues at the end - after the has bull devoured a few local toddlers, a brave torreador arrives and kills the beast. The whole event is somewhat riotous and feels very ancient.
So by those standards today's visit seemed positively tame. After celebrating our arrival in the south with a plate of each of crevettes a la persilliade and a glass of Picpoul at the municipal market bar, we just wandered about, happy to be somewhere bright, sunny and abroad
It did seem slightly odd that the old town appeared to be garlanded with hundreds of bras, strung like streamers across the road and knotted around lampposts.
In the end we worked it out. October is 'pink month' raising awareness about breast cancer. Festooning the municipality in bras seemed inspired to me, somewhat 'Situationalist', a tad Pussy Riot, arresting, thought-provoking and very French.
We also discovered that there was a regular water bus across the Etang de Thau to Séte, at €5 return it seemed very reasonable. Lunch in Séte tomorrow we decided.
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