1er avril au 26 mai Running, walking, eating, drinking and a man with a very big instrument.

We’ve been here over a year and we’re reminded summer is on its way when the bars have music playing. It started on the 1^st April, the eve of the Foulëes Valenciennoises, the town’s running festival and my lullaby that night was Uptown Funk.  I Nordic-walked the 7.5k route and Wilf ran the 5k. Security issues mean that the route has been changed from previous years and now, for the runners, sticks more closely to the town centre. The walkers had a long out and back stretch by some water, pleasant in the sunshine. I’d obviously relaxed a bit too much as I decided to do the Foulëe Santë afterwards, a real family fun run, though the four year-old girl in pink showed determination and a disappointing (for me) turn of speed on the home straight and beat me by several metres. The afternoon cool-down was, literally, a walk in the park.

The local “Embar(o)quement Immëdiat” festival was loosely based on Baroque music. We entered into the spirit of things by going to a beer-tastingand two "local speciality" lunches, all good.

Of course there was an accordeon!

I went to a concert in a church after the second lunch, part of the reason being that the church is connected with the Chemin de St Jacques which leads to Santiago de Compostella. I don’t like going to events by myself but will do if it’s the only option. I’d come prepared to sit in a chilly church but the heating was on and three hundred peole give off quite a lot of heat.

The band came on, about six of them. One had a very large instrument. I don’t know what it was but he was quite tall and it was much bigger than him, like a lute with a very long neck. I puzzled over it for a while: there was no way he’d be able to reach the top end of the fingerboard but he just played the lower end of it, with an apparently superfluous metre or so pointing to the heavens. The music was all on the theme of illness and curing it. One tune was by Purcell (go, the Brits!) and was, I’d heard, played on a collar-bone. The heat was getting to me. Man next door was looking down at his programme. One of the band read a description of a kidney-stone removal five hundred years ago. The man next to me had travelled from Lille  but nodded off. The music was dramatic, the patient laid out on the operating table, the incision made. MND wakes up but nods again a minute later The patient was carefully carried to a recovery bed and the music became very cheerful. I hoped it meant that the patient had recovered well and not that the surgeon was glad to get home for a quick drink.

It’s difficult to work out where we were on the programme but we come to  a piece that seems to consist of Viva, Viva, Viva, everyone plays and the music finishes with a loud flourish and it’s all over. Everyone is invited to have a coffee and cake outside the church - it's France, of course they were - but I go back to the flat.

The weather’s been lovely for walking. I’ve been to Sebourg (goes up and down a bit, is nearly in Belgium), Hergnies (flat, is near Belgium) and Condë-sur-L’Escaut (flat with a slag heap, near Belgium). I’m beginning to think that Belgium’s reputation of being boring is rather unfair as I’ve been told that it’s the best place for going out in the evening, the markets are better and beer costs less than in France.  Perhaps the Belgians just want to keep it for themselves

There was more music at the Place d’Armes for the dance weekend: groups doing folk, hip-hop, ballet and Argentine tango. There will be free lessons of the latter in July and August at the bandstand up the road.I may be there.

The following week we were supporting the town's link with Burkina Faso, the “Weekend in Ouagadougou” (pronounced Wagadoogoo and I’ll apologise now for putting that annoying tune in your head). There were bands, craft stalls, local and African, with a stone carver offering workshops. This involved letting anyone pick a piece of stearite, very soft stone, and filing it down with various large files, then sanding it smooth. Mine’s not quite finished but he let me take more paper and stones so I’ll have plenty to practise on.

There was also a bronze-casting demonstration, with a workshop showing how to make a beeswax model, which could be used in the casting process. The artist was a lovely guy, very interesting and interested, and we chatted about Paris, Giacometti and bronze sculptures. My workshop had to stop as he needed to fire his traditional forge, the one that he uses for all his work. It took about two hours for him to produce the model and made me understand why his work costs as much as it does. Each piece is unique because the mould is destroyed in the process. 

There are still some days left in May but they'll have to wait for a while. I'm too busy!