Je m'appelle Nicole. Non? Moi Nicole. Nicole. Et toi?

Just under a month ago, I jetted off to Southern France for a week’s holiday with friends. We flew to Rodez (a small airport in the Pyrenees) from where we drove for an hour to a small commune called St. Cirgues. The drive from the airport took us deep into the countryside, with undulating, glorious green fields either side of the road, and picturesque farm houses dotted along the way. It was hot, and the van we were in was baking, though the heat reaffirmed the fact we were actually on holiday and so only made our smiles broader. We were staying with my friend Nic’s Grandparents – Australian Kevin who liked to tell a story, and fierce, French Marcele, who we were warned would shout at us all at some point in the week. On arrival, we were directed to our bedrooms; mine was on the ground floor, in what Nic called ‘the old pig sty’. If it was once a pig sty, it bore no resemblance, and now contained a sink, a table, a washing machine and a fridge. And my bed.



It was a mismatched room, and I could sense there were spiders lurking in every corner, but it felt 100 times more comfortable than my room in London, and the view from my window over the fields, the flowers and the trees was incredibly beautiful.



And so began what has to have been one of the most beautiful and calming experiences of my life. It wasn’t like a holiday in the usual sense – of course, we had a lot of down time to relax, play and explore, but we also spent some of our time helping out with chores around the farm. Several times, we went down into Marcele’s forest (which stretched out way across the valley) to pick wild mushrooms. Following a lesson on safe mushrooms from Nic, we cast our eyes into the shadowy regions of the forest, looking for Cep and Girol mushrooms. You can not imagine the childish thrill we beginners felt as we spotted a mushroom - like panning for gold - we wandered around with our woven baskets, screaming and stamping on any poisonous mushrooms we spotted, and smugly showing off our good finds. After we’d gathered what we felt was a fairly impressive haul, we went exploring through the forest, finding our own routes down steep, slippery verges (cue near-fatal knife incident), jumping across streams and taking numerous photos of our beautiful surroundings.



It was all too good to be true. That evening, the holiday took a turn for the worst. Marcele served up mushroom omelette. A cold wave of dread slid over me. Ciaran hated egg, I despised mushroom, yet somehow the dinner had been constructed in such a way that it was impossible to separate the two. I gulped some down, each bite followed by a glass of water. I have truly tried to like mushrooms, and I gave it my all that evening, to show I appreciated Marcele cooking for us all and because I felt it was only right that I tried to do justice to the mushrooms we’d picked earlier that day. But to no avail. It still tasted like I was eating some sort of slimy, earthy animal. That weird soft firmness playing havoc with my taste buds and my mind. And then as I screwed up my face and quickly swallowed the last mouthful, just when I thought the worst was over, Marcele left the room calling back to us ominously, ‘we’ll have the Ceps tomorrow’.

Aside from the mushroom incident, the rest of the holiday was a dream. We picked cherries from her trees, which Marcele made into a jam.



We took a 9km walk to the nearest town to buy some supplies (booze) – a hot day, but an enjoyable walk through the countryside, at the end of which we slumped into the nearest café we could find for a refreshing lemonade and some pizzas. Another day, Marcele arranged for a local lady to drive us to the lake one afternoon – this hippyish woman with a huge love for Bob Marley – where we ate, drank beers, swam and read our books in the sun. We went out onto a football pitch one night to tell ghost stories. We played cards and danced to George Michael. The boys played football. I taught Alex how to do killer sudoku.

Having being warned of Marcele’s sharp tongue – we were told on our drive to the farm that she had called a 6 year old child an ‘imbecile’ a few weeks earlier – I found that she was an incredibly lovely lady, who just liked polite and helpful people. I think she liked me too, and it culminated in her asking me to dye her hair for her. I was petrified – sure, I’d done my own before, but to dye a notoriously fierce lady’s hair, a lady I’d just met four days previously was absolutely terrifying. But I stepped up. And aside from a tiny bit of hair which I accidentally didn’t dye, it looked lovely.

And so the holiday ended. We spent our last evening playing charades in the kitchen, trying to drink the last of out 5l box of red wine and this horrendous rum we’d bought. And the next day, we were driven back to the airport, and in a flash we were back in London, getting a train back into a grimy city which felt like a world away from beautiful St Cirgues.