CHAPTER 12 Cathars

I was expecting the spring decorating party of 1993 to be sizeable. Apart from those who had been before and who expressed interest in participating again, two ex work colleagues Dan and Bert were keen to come. Dan asked if it would be OK to bring his girlfriend Charlotte along. I could see no reason why not, so I readily agreed.

Strangely as the date of our departure approached and money needed to be committed for ticket purchases, everyone except for Dan, his girlfriend and Bert, suddenly found that work commitments prevented them from coming. This made me wonder if I was very poor company, or if I had previously made my guests work too hard. Perhaps it been the poor weather that we had encountered on previous trips that put them off. May be it was all of those things combined together.

We followed the now customary itinerary of taking the evening flight from Heathrow to Toulouse and then picking up a hire car for the late night drive to Frasquenet.

I allocated the front bedroom to Dan and Charlotte and the back bedroom to myself. Bert was allocated Sarah's bunk bed in the windowless middle bedroom.

When I woke up in the morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my visitors were already up and about. They had already visited the boulangerie, so breakfast awaited me on the kitchen table. This was a first. Guests who rose earlier in the morning than I did, were a rare breed. It was agreed that given the visit was to last for four days, that we would spend the first two mornings decorating and cleaning and the remainder of the time exploring the area.

The plan was to give the living room one lick of white emulsion, give the kitchen a good cleaning, and to touch up the paintwork in the bedrooms and stairwell. It quickly became apparent that Charlotte had no plans to contribute to our work effort. She seemed to be sulking about something, but I never found out what. We worked and she sat at the kitchen table looking disinterested in what was going on around her and reading a book.

Dan had bought a nice camera with a massive telephoto lens along with him. As a keen ornithologist he was hoping to to capture some pictures of birds. The day was overcast and cool. I drove my companions first to Narbonne market to pick up some provisions, then to Capestang followed by the now familiar route following the Canal du Midi as far as Homps, before turning back to Frasquenet. Capestang looked particularly severe with the grim gargoyles on it's church framed against the grey sky. The Canal du Midi was also less inspiring than usual, since the plane trees that lined it had not yet sprung their spring foliage. The main success was that Dan spotted several birds of prey. I doubt if he got very good pictures though, since they were circling far above our heads.

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