Goodbye, blue skies.
A rather sodden city in southern France
They’re trying to drive tourism to this quaint old city, which probably explains the £30 return flights. But you’ve got to paint the walls of your airport, Beziers city council.
The weather is a conspiracy theory until it’s not. Until it’s right. Until it leaves you high-and-dry or rather low-and-wet. I think we’d all like to pretend that the conditions aren’t important to our lives — that we are strong enough and autonomous to overcome the sway of the seasons.
Codswallop.
Everything looks better with blue sky behind it.
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And so it was. Once upon a time. That is to say: at our point of arrival. Beziers Airport is a big room split into like three slightly smaller rooms. It’s smaller than Ushuaia, and that was small. Come to think of it — where is the smallest commercial airport in the world? Bound to be some obscure corner of this glistening orb. Flight a day; fewer than 100 souls. No? This particular room split into three slightly smaller rooms has a really rather anonymous, uninspiring feel to it. Everything looks better with blue sky behind it, including this woman from our flight who’s seemingly incapable of stepping over a three-inch obstacle. Got embarrassed by the little stumble and proceeded to complain to…the border control officer. How fantastic. I’ve quite honestly never seen someone look less interested.
‘It is not safety. I almost broke my leg’.
‘Ok’.
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A certified Karen.
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Everything looks better with a blue sky behind it.
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Even the giant renovation works and shimmering scaffolding on Les Halles. That covered market, usually bustling with life (perhaps?) is now a full-on building site, right across the road from our delightful little abode.
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Investment. Stick a blue sky behind that. Wrap it up with composite drawings. Sell it to the people. They’re pumping EUR16 million into Les Halles. I read that they’re trying to drive tourism to this quaint old city, which probably explains the £30 return flights. But you’ve got to paint the walls of your airport, Beziers city council.
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And, dare I say it: you’ve got to have some stuff open sometimes.
​The cafes and bars operate at entirely unpredictable hours. Who am I to say otherwise? Who am I to stick my oversized, metropolitan nose into the mechanisms of obscure southern France? It’s precisely the sort of place to forgo Google Maps entirely, to stumble across some hole in the wall and bask in it should it afford you entry.
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Everything looks better with blue sky behind it.
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Including Pont Vieux — the quintessential brickwork bridge from the 12th century, which looks up at the city’s pastel prettiness and Cathédrale Saint-Nazaire. Your options are: picture old market carts and horses clip-clopping its cobbles, or, look down at one of the several dog shits not picked up on it, and marvel at the sheer number of worms in the thing.
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Everything looks better with blue sky behind it.
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Like these labyrinthine streets of boutique clothing and niche jewellery; the bric-a-brac stores with old perfume dispensers and mucky mirrors and snakeskins. The little bar selling free-pour rose wine from that shimmering vineyard just across the way from the grand cathedral.
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Everything looks better with blue sky behind it.
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Except a battered corpse. I’d hedge my bets that one of those is harrowing whatever weather it’s in. Heaps of those in Beziers back in the 1700s. Religious tensions and massacres and the likes.
So this blue sky’s about to close and join every other storefront in an obstinate strike. I can see it happening. Those puffy white things up there are starting to drift and cluster. There they come. That’s it. Just a little closer.
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The orb gone for good, we turn to cheese. The rather rotund gentleman in Le Affineur communicates with us entirely through an app on his phone, so it’s like listening to Stephen Hawking talk about the ageing cellar beneath our feet, about how we don’t need chutney and how ‘it’s aromas, not flavours’ and ‘oh, don’t tell me what you think until you’ve swallowed the cheese’. Sometimes it’s difficult to discern if those pesky aromas are the little wriggly splats of goat's cheese packed into the place, or perhaps just the stench of his pretension.
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The weather is a conspiracy theory until it’s not. Until the conspiracy theorists prevail and it’s just…wet. Like it said it would be. Just really wet and soggy and sodden and damp and wet.
All there is to do, I suppose, is talk about food.
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​​Because some establishments did open, and during those periods we entered them and refused to leave until we’d been fed. In exchange for money, of course. A quite quintessential rope-a-dope.
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Le Patio is delectable, with fresh Skate, smooth, creamy caluiflower, and rare local beef. The dauphinoise gratin has black pudding baked in. Frankly, I don’t give a single shilling shit what colour sky you put behind that, it’s going to be a bit good.
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Maison de Petit Pierre is a top 5% in a lifetime meal by all accounts. Four courses of sheer flavour sensation, from smoked cod and fresh tomato sauce to crispy duck with tart caramelised onions and a cherry leaf, topped off by a cheese course and this impossibly light vanilla cream with notes of almond and raspberry. The sheerest brand of satisfaction.
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Likewise at Pica-Pica, where we smile our way through lunchtime small plates of labneh, pistachio and pomegranate molasses, plus a duck egg with crab, plus absurd smoked mackerel and honey soy vegetables with divine little pickles, plus good wine and a sense of calm love, plus succulent chickpea fries and this absolutely absurd grilled artichoke with pecorino and fresh pesto. I don’t know if listing things that one eats is a good blueprint for food criticism, but there’s nothing much to say other than our stomachs were satiated and bloated the full nine yards.
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Quite naturally, a pervasive grey lingered over our day trip to Montpellier. In its grand facades and sweeping sandstone streets you have all the hallmarks of a magnificent city, but I’d hazard that it’d look better with a blue sky behind it. On the train there we whizz past bulrush and marshlands and lowrise towns with the occasional hint of industry. On the train back we whizz past the same, just on the other side, and it’s all a spot more sodden.
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Fortunately, sometimes you go away to not do much at all. Sometimes you just want to read your book and watch the world and eat and drink and relax. Sometimes.
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Of course, it helps if the return travel costs less than four pints in London. It helps if you’re open to closure, you want to show your tastebuds some love, or give your melanin a rest. And it certainly helps if you’re not huge on stimulation.
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Bon Appétit and bugger to blue skies.