Coming over all French

I’ve come over all French today. The Scottish heat wave that has seen us bask for the last few days in temperatures of over 25 Celsius has turned me all continental. Yesterday, for the first time in my memory of living in Glasgow we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner outside: and by outside I don’t mean crowding under a bus shelter to scoff our fish and chips.

Indeed yesterday we had the full Provencal experience. Croissants, cool fresh juice, and freshly brewed coffee to kick off the day; a mixed salad of bountiful provisions, with warm, crusty bread and a glass of chilled rosé for lunch; and a tender fillet of salmon baked with honey, lemon and ginger (and more chilled wine) to round things off. A little stroll into the main “place au centre ville” for a digestif is all that would have been required to make it a perfect day but given the lack of convivial café’s round our neck of the woods a quick brandy on patio stood in.

I must say that I just feel better. Better that it is not raining, that the wind isn’t howling round every corner, that the sun is proud and perky in the sky. The overall effect of this weather is to lighten my temperament and make me think happy thoughts – if I were a ten year old girl I’d be dreaming of kittens and puppies.

I’ve reached a conclusion this week that while all of the other things I admire about French life are valuable and essential it is that commodity, so unpredictable in the west of Scotland, of stable mild weather that delivers the magic bullet.

It can’t surely be the heat alone, or even the Vitamin D booster (as I’ve noted in previous posts), but I think it is something more complex. It is a rich cocktail of all those things that I hold dear – for even though the weather may bring me down, I aim to live my life in as continental a manner as possible. So perhaps it is the case when the sun shines it brings all these other factors together, the glue that binds to coin a phrase.

Either way, all I know is that this beautiful Mediterranean weather has me dreaming once more of olives and pastis, and of a shady veranda in front of a typical Provencal villa where I can jot down more of these thoughts, write possibly the first great Gallo/Scots crime novel and make a modest yet comfortable living with my family around me and the pain in my joints less pronounced.