C'est la Fête des Vignerons!

Saturday 7 June has arrived. A Big Day for a Little Village.

Over the last few days everyone has been busy tidying their gardens and frontages, and all the verges have been neatly mown and flailed. The messy stacks of wooden pallets and crates that generally litter the area outside any working Cave have been piled out of sight, and tractor trailers have been decorated, somewhat randomly and inexplicably, with bunches of flowering Scotch Broom. Willy, the village's employed doer-of-odd-jobs-and public-works, has been busy distributing various items of display equipment and metal railings around and about, and busy-looking women have been busily carrying busy-looking bundles of goodness-knows-what into the village hall.

Today is the festival of the Fleur de Vigne. There will be a painting competition and exhibitions of paintings in the village wine Caves. There will be food in the main square, and music from 'L'Art a Tatouille'. And in the evening, the local wine-makers will open their Caves to the public for visits and tastings and general wine-induced merriment.

And, if good sense and a lack of time for preparation hadn't inhibited us, there would have been llamas in an enclosure outside the Castle, with two friendly English idiots attempting to provide interesting facts about llamas to the hordes of curious visitors, whilst simultaneously advertising their new 'lamas-balades' business.

This was in fact the suggestion made by the enthusiastic wine-maker, whose Cave is situated opposite our front door, and who saw the opportunity to attract more visitors to his neck of the village's wine-selling woods, through the artful placement of a couple of alluring llamas in a small enclosure in the road between our house and his Cave. And for a few insane moments we were indeed tempted.

"Would the big, empty wine crates work as a fence? Perhaps the Mayor could lend us some metal barriers. Could we tether the llamas on the grass verge? Wouldn't it be a wonderful opportunity for us to publicize our enterprise? Wouldn't it be good for us to integrate into the village activity?" But even as we nodded and smiled and "oui"d, and started to contemplate the logistics of getting the llamas down the long road from the field and past the gauntlet of local loose and barkful dogs, my mind began creating the familiar images of horror and chaos.

What if the llamas were frightened by all the people and jumped out of the enclosure? What if they ran amok through the village, trailing trashed wine-display tables and art exhibitions in their wake? What if they trampled small poodles or tiny enfants? What if they spooked, and jumped off the cliff at the end of our road, and died agonising and screech-ridden deaths below hundreds of traumatised on-lookers?

After a night 'sleeping on it' (or not), we thanked the enterprising suggester for his tres bon idea, but declined to take up his suggestion on this occasion. "We need to do more training with the llamas. They are not ready, just yet. They would be frightened by so many people. They are still a bit wild. Thank you for your kind offer of help. Perhaps next time....."

And so the Big Day will pass without an unusual contribution from 'those English with the llamas'. And if the weather doesn't perk up a bit soon, it will probably pass without much of a contribution from the 'artistes passionnes' or even the general public. 15 degrees, a strong north-westerly wind and showers is not what you'd expect for a June fete in the south of France. Sounds more like a school summer fair in Derby, actually. Perhaps in the absence of the interesting llama display, we should offer ourselves up to have cold, wet sponges thrown at our heads instead.