Summing up St Aignan

And so the sands of time draw to a close on the brief intersection of our lives and the rather longer history of St Aignan Sur Cher. To think that our week here will leave a lasting impression on the town is to rather lose sight of reality. St Aignan has existed as an organised population centre since the 10th century. It is has been sieged three times - but not since 1222 (not including WWII, which was too small and recent to rate a mention, but during which it was the demarcation line between occupied and free France). In the three paragraph tourist summary, nothing has been significant enough to rate a mention since 1663.


A better question then will be, what if any lasting impression does it leave on us? The answer is possibly 'some', which is a bit of a cop out I know, but nonetheless a fair estimate. When we first arrived I thought I could live here, but after doing so for a week, I know that is not the case. The coffee has been very good, the pastries and bread much better than that; but the cafés are very functional and a tad disappointing. I can't help but suspect they are deliberately low key in order to keep the tourists out so that the locals can use them as they want, but even so there was a dinginess that I found surprising. Even pushing further afield, we found no cafés that met my expectations - though we saw restaurants that did, and the patisseries were gorgeous. If even one of them had a coffee option I would have moved in for the week.


Douglas Adams coined the term "shoe event horizon" to describe a hypothetical economic threshold beyond which it is not viable to have anything other than shoe shops. If this principle is legitimate, then St Aignan may be teetering on a 'coiffures' and / or 'opticians' event horizon, as there appear to be startlingly large numbers of both for a town of this size, but few other shops here. I'd be interested to know how big the weekly / monthly / yearly range of movement is for people who live here. I don't think you could live in the town and not have to head further afield for supplies fairly regularly, though obviously you would have an impeccable hair-do when you did.

Our first impression of St Aignan, or the first few days impression, was idyllic. The still, warm, blue days were superb, and the view from the house across the Cher quite breathtaking every time I glanced out a window. That has faded just a little, though the more overcast days might have speeded up that process. The view from the toilet, across slate roofs and ancient brick chimneys to the 12th century church bell tower (imposing in daylight, surreal when floodlit at night) is just as compelling now as it was when we first arrived. I have had to fight the impulse to photograph it through the bubbly, distorted glass every single time I walk in there.


There have been a few things that have stuck in my mind. The restaurant that Mum and I, and then Justine and I went to will be one of them. Ordering more or less randomly in French we got lucky for 7 out of 8 courses ordered (the veal kidney was like winning a set of ceramic ducks at the kids school quiz night, and being best friends with the people who donated them so having to put them up on the wall). The decor was superb. In Australia we would have known that it was contrived to look like a mish-mash of architectural and fashion styles from the last 400 years. Here at least there is the possibility that it is genuine, and I like that. A lot.

The late evenings. The cheap, good wine. The good cheap wine, consumed in the late evenings, watching the town across the river as the warm orange light slid off the buildings.

Driving and parking are typically chaotic, and I finally observed a much-anticipated altercation when a delivery truck ripped the side out of a parked renault. You could still hear the lady berating the driver 10 minutes later, but he appeared to care not at all. That was fun too, in a naughty sort of way, and much the better for observing and not participating.

As Justine and I wandered around town last night after dinner we chatted about how, even in a week, you can get used to being in a small medieval town where hardly anyone speaks your language. It shouldn't really happen that way. I suspect that, while being in THIS place is unusual for us, being SOME place unusual is not that unusual for us. I like that a lot too.

If there is a lasting impact of St Aignan on us, it is possibly how much we have enjoyed a holiday where you just arrive somewhere and spend a week there, with little or no agenda. I would never do that at home, and to be honest have never really wanted to do it on holiday. I fully expected that one day we would train into Paris, and another day go to Tours or Orleans or one of the other larger cities - but we very quickly gave up all desire to do that. Hours spend sitting in large comfy chairs, reading books and gazing mindlessly out the window while sipping a wine or coffee - and not infrequently both - seemed far more appealing. I could handle this sort of holiday again, and it suits the family well.

The kids enjoyed not being bundled off on endless adult-oriented excursions, and the fact that the is a playground a 2 minute walk away across the old stone bridge, and visible from the house helped, a lot. There was also a pool there, but with an odd (and apparently France-wide) rule that you have to wear skin tight bathers to use the pool. Luckily the guy who stopped us from swimming in our normal bathers also had some he could lend us, though it took Aidan a while to believe that this was a good thing!

Tomorrow it is back to the real world, albeit briefly. The car is due at the rental car return place by 9am, and we think that is at least a 2.5-3 hour drive, and we'll be allowing some margin of error on that, so it will be an early start. Hopefully, by mid afternoon we will be with Espen, Ragnhild and Marie in Oslo. Oslo in summer is one of my most perfect memories, and though Ragnhild has been at pains to lower my expectations of the weather, if it gets anything like what I saw there last time, I will be rapturous.

We have not found France expensive. Wine (always a critical indicator) is well under AUD$10 a bottle. My memory is that we can expect to multiply that several times over in Norway. Despite all the stereotypes, the French have been almost universally friendly and supportive of our limited attempts at speaking their language. Again, my memory of Norwegians was of a really friendly and welcoming place. We've loved our week here, but tomorrow we are glad to be on our way, and heading to a place where we are optimistically expecting a different but equally positive experience.

I'll sign off from France with some shots of Chateau Cheverny and it's surrounding township, where we went yesterday, and from where we will attempt to bring back two wine glasses intact.

A bientôt.