Flowers, France and Facemasks
August 2020
We had just come out of lockdown in 2020. Socialising with our neighbours over a cocktail or two. Luckily for us we have two super nice neighbours who seem to collect properties in lovely places. Gary and Lisa.
Gary, a lovely American from Los Angeles, said “what are you guys up to in August?. We really didn’t have anything planned as just being able to speak to people outside of our house was a bit of excitement. “Why don’t you take the keys to our property in the south of France and stay there for as long as you want?”
I looked at Helen and raised my eyebrows. “Well, we really don’t have anything to do apart from sit around the house “ Helen looked at me with a cheeky smile,shrugged and said “Why not?.”
So two months later, we drive down to Dover to catch the Eurostar. The car park is almost empty. Our leaving time was at 11:30am, we had got there just before 10.30am. The guy at check in said we should just catch the first one available. So we did. We arrived in Calais, prepped ourselves and drove 13 hours straight to get to the little tiny town of Castelnau-de-Guers, in the Occitanie region. I have to say, the roads in France are incredible. Like driving on the smoothest butter. Paris was nuts. But the rest was heavenly.
When we arrived at 11pm, we knocked on the neighbours house opposite to grab the keys hoping they were still up. Luckily they were. We got the keys went inside this incredible building and just thought we had landed. It felt like everything that had happened since March 2020 dissolved. A stunning property with a pool overlooking the countryside, grapevines growing over the most exquisite courtyard and no noise, apart from a cricket or two.
It was a real privilege to stay in our friends property and for me as an artist the best thing I can do is give something back that is personal. Gary and Lisa loved my floral work and I said, jokingly, I can paint a mural in your property to say thank you. They didn’t even think about it. Straight away they said yes do what you wanna do on the wall going up the stairs in the main landing, but make sure it’s floral!
We stayed there for six weeks. We ate in the local town. We tried and tested many of the French wines on offer. We swam in the pool, picked figs from the tree in the garden and relaxed. In between relaxing, I also painted a mural on the wall.
And Helen, being a maker and ceramicist had brought some clay with her. The equivalent of my pens, but slightly heavier! And from a picture that Gary had sent us of their dog Tara, a huge adorable Alsatian, floating on an inflatable flamingo in the pool, made a 3-D model of exactly that.
We had such an amazing time. It felt like everything slowed down. After the six weeks we drove back to Calais for the return trip, another 13 hours. On the Eurostar, we swapped seats and once we landed in Dover, Helen did the UK leg back to Peckham. It was one and a half hours of utter madness!
We were so used to going out in France with face masks and people generally keeping their distance, to being on the motorway and the craziness of UK drivers, then travelling through Greenwich with an abundance of people and no face masks.
I don’t think we went out for about three weeks after we got back!
