Dog days of August

The days start by casting lemon-bright sunshine through the wooden shutters. The sky is cloudless. By ten o'clock, the heat is rising and all freshness has gone. This is the "canicule", the heavy heat of late summer when all you want to do is plunge into this:

Or find a shady spot where the warm pines release their scent...

...to drift away with a good book - this is Seek My Face by John Updike (so far, so very good)...

All this gentle activity is interspersed with some lovely food, with the emphasis on fresh fruit picked from the trees and vegetables from a local market. Some ice-cold wine...then, after dusk, a wander off to one of the many village fetes - not fetes in the British sense, but three-day parties in the main square under plane trees strung up with lights, and dancing to a live band.

Last weekend, the party was at Viens. The same band, to our certain knowledge, returns year after year. The line-up has changed since those days in the 1980s when a high point was their rendition of George Michael's "Car'less Whis-perr" ("Gill-ti feet 'ave go' no rhyt-hem") and songs from the perennial French love affair with the Rolling Stones. There are dancing girls too, in extraordinary - and occasionally risque - costumes. The whole village turns out, young and old. The children jig around, while their grandparents swoop around to the tango and passo doble and show they've still got the moves.