Canicule Dinner

Canicule in French means “scorching heat” or “heat wave”, and it’s a word we’ve learned well the last few days here. My (John) sister Jan arrived Tuesday afternoon from Paris via the TGV (très grand vitesse, the high speed trains of Europe), at the hottest part of the afternoon, just as Météo France was issuing a canicule warning for several regions in France, including ours, Tarn et Garonne. Canicules have specific definitions in France, including high nightly lows as well as high daytime temperatures. They set up here in SW France when a low settles over Ireland or the North Atlantic and draws hot air from North Africa across the med and into southern France. They’re very careful here after the catastrophic canicule of 2003 caused more than 14,000 deaths, thus the official warning.

The next day was the weekly fellows dinner where Cheryl prepares dinner for the artists and invited guests, and it was forecast to be dangerously hot. There’s very little air conditioning in this part of France, but virtually every house has big wooden shutters on every window. The idea is to close the windows and the shutters mid-morning to try to keep the interiors cool, and it works surprisingly well in the old brick and stone houses with thick walls, like most of the homes here in Auvillar. We shut everything up that morning, and Cheryl did as much prep as she could inside. Jan and I did a little touring in the heat of the afternoon, stopping at the closest winery, Domaine de Thermes, to sample some icy rosé. There they had sprinklers on the roof to help keep the temperatures lower inside.

It was around 39C just before dinner time, but we had lots of cold water and rosé and other apéritifs, and shady places to sit. There were eleven in total with Cheryl and Jan and I from our house. Three resident fellows included visual artist Mary Mazziotti, playwright Richard Herstek, and painter Patricia Ingersoll, and Tish’s husband, photographer Jack Ingersoll. Neighbors from Le Port were Lucy Anderton, writer and former directrice of Moulin à Nef, and her partner Jean-Philippe Roux. From Puymirol, near Agen, was Mexican-American painter Allan Sanchez, and last but far from least was Fay Michener, from New York and Saint-Clair near Valence d’Agen. It was a lively group and before long no one cared how hot it was any longer.

Dinner went long into the night, and it started to cool by the time we were cleaning up. The next day dawned cool and cloudy, and the canicule was over. It had been the hottest day of summer to be sure, but nothing more serious.