With the royals near Viens

 

In the fall-out from William and Kate's brief sojourn in Provence, a couple of things have been bothering me (not, not those...behave!). The royal couple probably wish they'd stayed in a real hideaway inside the medieval village of Viens, with its twisty enclosed streets and secret courtyards, or safe behind the strong iron bars of one of the beautiful strongholds like this one...

 

 

...rather than William's cousin Lord Linley's château up the road where the swimming pool terrace turned out to be rather more exposed.

 

It may be grandly named the "Château d'Autet" but the property, though a large house with attendant buildings, is a centuries-old hunting lodge with few features to distinguish it from the characteristic bastides all around, solid and imposing as they are. Still, I'm sure the name adds distinction for the wealthy holidaymakers who rent the place.

 

The other puzzlement on its website is the statement that David and Serena Linley were introduced to the area by Peter Mayle, author of A Year in Provence. Again, is that just another marketing angle, to link it to a publishing phenomenon?

 

Because a little local knowledge tells me that David Linley was much more likely to have known the area through his own family. His mother Princess Margaret and father the Earl of Snowdon were great friends with the British entrepreneur and inventor Jeremy Fry, who had a summer home close to Oppedette, only a few kilometres away.

 

Fry's retreat was a formerly deserted hamlet called Le Grand Banc, hidden away on a hillside overlooking the gorge at Oppedette. In the sixties and seventies it was an artistic, intellectual and bohemian haven place for his many friends, including the Queen's sister and her husband and children. Nowadays, it is a small, very exclusive hotel - and the Gorge d'Oppedette cuts through the landscape in a natural barrier to even the most daring of photographers.

 

 

And Viens still has a bohemian vibe and a thriving artistic community, as I wrote during the summer here: Viens: a sunny bohemia.  



 

Burlesque dans les arbres

Introducing...Miss Superfly, who has been left hanging (as it were) while we've been away for a few days on the Cote d'Azur, staying with friends near Antibes and then wandering around on the coast.

Miss Superfly arrived in the dusty Place d'Ormeau in Viens at 6.30 in the evening, an exotic creature in a kimono - which she rapidly shed to jazz music. She sang in English - in an authentic French rasp that convinced no one she was American, as the compere had claimed - and danced while trying on various hats designed to look like a fly's head. She smoked a cigarette as if she had stepped into a 1940s film and pretended - at least we hope she was pretending - to swig from a bottle of hard liquor.

There was a murderous rendition of God Bless the Child and then the main part of the act: she swung herself up onto a trapeze suspended some twelve feet above the ground, as lithe and supple as a child, though she was clearly rather more advanced in years.

As with all the best live performances, there was a thrill in knowing that things could go wrong. Along the way to the ascent there had been glitches and hiccups, and now the element of unpredictability was tangible. We strained forward in our seats as she swung ever higher and let herself fall, only to be caught my her ankles. The children were enraptured by one of the best aspects of France as far as they are concerned: the cavalier attitude to Health and Safety compared with their own cotton woolly country. "She hasn't got a safety harness. No net! It's fantastic!!"

The audience nodded and grimaced in appreciation, the older folks, especially the men, with the same dreamy expressions with which they greet the scantily-dressed dancing girls on stage at the village fetes. Young children were running around in front of the trapeze. Wine was drunk. It was one of those events, we agreed, that was exactly the kind of spectacle you would hope to find on a summer evening in the South of France. Curiously old-fashioned, with a hint of memorable magic.



 

Viens: a sunny bohemia

There's a distinctly arty-bohème vibe in the village of Viens. The tiny widow in dark clothes buying a single artichoke in the general store seems on good terms with the cosmopolitan gentleman in pressed white slacks and a red Gucci belt, as are the younger crowd in their dusty layers, harem pants and dreadlocks. The communist mayor (communism à la francaise), the farmers and the families who have been here for generations and often have brave tales to tell, the wealthy Parisian and Swiss second homeowners, the artists who live and work here, all contribute to the mix.

They say the village has been here for a thousand years, and its narrow medieval streets have seen it all. It sits at the edge of a plateau, protected on two sides by precipitous rocky cliffs, and the name Viens means "Come!" but in the sense of "Come on then...if you dare!"

It's a special place for Rob and me - especially Rob, as it's where he spend his long boyhood summers. His headmaster father could take off to Provence for the duration of the school holidays, and the family loved the area so much they bought some land close to the cliffs in Viens and built a house on it. Staying there in my early twenties was a revelation: the heat and light and colour and laid-back atmosphere were intoxicating.

Every summer Viens hosts a week-long art and culture event and this year it was bigger than ever. The Mistress of Ceremonies towered over everyone on her stilts.

At one point she came careening up through the Saracen gate in the old ramparts, having to duck under the part of one ancient house built in a bridge over an alley, in order to round up the spectators who were unaware a venue had been changed at the last minute. How did she manage it with not so much as a wobble?

Bands played every evening. Theatre and mime acts came. There were talks under the plane trees of the central square. There was even a burlesque singer and dancer on a trapeze (who deserves her own post, and will get one - watch this space!). Artists opened their studios and invited other artists to show their work too. Painting workshops were set up outside in gardens and on terraces.

And the village itself was decorated with life-size figures around every corner: lavender girls slumped by a laden wheelbarrow in the castle courtyard, a Spanish dancer stood by the animals' drinking trough, a gangster lurked at the edge of darkness, with many more. Even a bicycle was dressed for the occasion!