Some Theoule Sur Mer farewell pictures. I have some vanilla pictures of these (a curious term considering that I mean by this merely normal realistic images of foxes holding signs), and I like them, but I have become, as is my nature here, so carried away with my text imbued versions that they have superceded the regular ones.
And so I present these tableaus, and their special messages from Theoule Sur Mer, on our last morning here:
Though yesterday I ventured one, out of the camera, unaltered photograph from our last days in Theoule Sur Mer, it was hardly representative of, on the one hand, the hundreds of miscellaneous images I have collected over the past couple of months, nor of the complicated beauty of this place as it really is. And so, with that in mind I set forth once again to bring out the variety of possibilities in my images of this tiny slice of the Cote D'Azur. Darling, complicated, puny, exotic, plain Theoule Sur Mer. While most of these images over the next days may appear to be complete fabrications, they are recognizably the places we have been living and walking around in even as they partake of all their fantastical elements.
What a little French beach town it is here in Theoule Sur Mer! And if someone had wanted to give us a neat and pretty apartment with a view of the sea I would have gladly settled in to watch old age slowly roll in here. But no one wanted to give us one of those, and it probably worked out for the best. I think we'll do better disappearing into the wilderness of a big city. The tight world of this French Village doesn't quite have all the things one might think of when they imagine living in France.
What does one think of when they imagine living in France?
Champagne bars!
Cheese shops!
Opera Houses!
Matisse Museums!
But yes, also quaint houses with flowers climbing their crumbling walls even in the Winter, and Christmas lights in the street with a village hall packed full of tiny nativity scenes from hundreds of cities across the world.
I'm just saying nowhere is going to have everything. That is the nature of... everywhere. We picked our pile. I'm nervously looking forward to settling down.
But a couple of more days here is fine. The waves roll in. I'll try to finish eating what I have in the fridge. We go for one more lovely walk on the once confusing now familiar winding streets and paths. I take a few pictures. None of them turn out anywhere near how magic they seem when I take them, but if you want to just see a plain picture today, with nothing added or made more fancy, I can show you that, just so the leaving won't be too sad.
We finally made it to the Theoule Sur Mer market! Though we have been living here for approaching two months, we have somehow missed the village market on every single Friday it has taken place! At first ignorance kept us away, and then a comedy of errors conspired to cause us to miss the market each week, first through apartment hunting, then due to the unfortunately timed business of closing on our lease and setting up house, and then through a variety of appointments and health emergencies cropping up at just the wrong time every friday in a mysterious ill-fated clockwork. Even today, we only made it back to the market by waking early in our big city apartment, and then dashing to just in time catch the train back here.
But finally, finally we made it!
Out in the village square, which is really more of a roundabout than a village square, but whatever, I'm not going to run down dear little Theoule Sur Mer, the market was gloriously gathered. Now keep in mind this is not a big town, and it is Winter, so it is impressive that there was anything there at all, but, the market consisted of three vendors.
Just three, but that's more than none.
And as for patrons, well, there was us.
So I did my part as well as I could.
There was the vegetable and fruit vendor (good prices on pineapples, but not local). There was an olive man. And there was a fishmonger. As for vegetables, we have a good supply on that at our two places in town so I gave him a pass. I was sad there was no cheesemonger, but really, fish was no small thing. There is nothing in the way of fish to be got in this town so I got a nice hefty salmon steak. There were a few other fishes, notably some extremely crude cross section chunks of something that almost looked like swordfish but I don't think was. I cooked the salmon today in olive oil, salt, lemon, and chunks of garlic. It was really good! I found it fresh and enjoyed the versimilitude of the flimsy bag the fish lady threw it in. The price was only five or six euros too, which seemed a fair deal.
I also bought, with a bit less alacrity, some olives from the man who emerged from his car to serve me (perhaps keeping warm in there?). I have had shocking few opportunities to buy olives anywhere and being in Provence it seemed high time I dug in. I got little black, nicoise olives and some green garlic ones. On the whole they were fine, with a similar touch of unrefined crudeness to them not unlike the savage cuts to the fish steaks. I also got some sort of tomato... thing (a sauce? a reduction?) that I'll try tomorrow. Mostly I was just proud to have taken part in the village commerce.
Tomorrow is the Theoule Christmas Celebration of some kind. We are not sure what to expect, but we don't expect much, though the lights are nice to see already. We do expect it nevertheless to complete our Theoule experience, and we will thus be ready to close up our airbnb and move on to regular big city apartment living.
Where we're going to live comes with two markets six days a week both within walking distance from us, one very famous, and one supposedly much better than the famous one, but it would be unfair to make comparisons to here in Theoule. It's a different charm altogether. And one I look forward to.
As ever here on clerkmanifesto I am documenting my surroundings, in one way or another.
Because my surroundings are currently The South of France, lately, you are probably often saying: "Well that's pretty."
Yes, I should probably make a point of going outside more.
While gingerly assembling our new attic apartment from a distance, we are still living here in Theoule Sur Mer, the charming little beach town that has ever so slowly fallen into something like a half slumber. All the lively cafes along the water have closed down completely by now, mid november, or they're open technically, but stay closed under any pretext they can come up with; rain, too windy, it's thursday, or staff bonding sessions are being held at a nice restaurant in a bigger town. And I don't fault them. It is pretty sleepy here. Not dead, mind you, people still stroll in to town all day and walk along the beach in their ones and twos. In the middle of the day maybe someone goes for a swim in the Mediterranean while their friends in sweaters take pictures of them. But that's about it. None of them are likely to be having a long lunch, or a drink overlooking the bay, unless it's super nice out, or thursday, or whatever special condition is met, at which point everyone is having drinks and lunch and it might as well be September.
Meanwhile I am watching it all from the pretty windows of our apartment building, a peach colored place with eight or nine units. And in our apartment may be much of the explanation. As I said, our building here has eight or nine units, all with lovely views of the ocean and an extraordinarily pleasent setting on something of a boardwalk leading off to road-free beaches and a (modest) nature area. And here's the kicker:
I'm pretty sure we're the only people who live here.
Seriously! I'm pretty sure we live in an apartment building of eight or nine units all alone, with every other apartment completely empty, although it is possible one old lady lives here very, very, very quietly. And another unit seems to be having a lot of mysterious work being done on it.
So, those aren't a lot of restaurant goers.
I could work up some of these images, some altered, others right out of the camera (so to speak). And maybe I would in time, but... news!
We seem to be on the edge of finalizing a lease for an apartment.
We're moving to a big city!
These small and medium Cote D'Azur towns are lovely and charming and fun, but as people absolutely insistant on not owning a car, there is an element to them that is against the grain of that. While France is more agreeable to mass transit and... walking, that does not at all mean it is devoted to it. And it is very much a car centric and car designed world in France outside of the big cities (and even, sadly, to a degree inside them). Nevertheless a rich, eminently walkable, rich cityscape awaits us, and I can complain about cars later.
And so with our time in Theoule Sur Mer numbered I find myself doing strange things like waking in the middle of the night and taking strange, intentionally blurred photographs out the window of the lights in the darkness of the shore and ocean.
Here is my collection of experiments then:
Though we cannot seem to find a home here, we do have our pretty place to stay for another five or six weeks. A full moon rose over the Mediterranean tonight, causing those of us out by the boardwalk to inadvertantly gawk, even if we were just popping over to the market for champagne and toilet paper, but the town does feel just a little more shut down everyday. The boulangeries are now selling their baguettes out of the tabac with the mean lady, and the restaurants that haven't shut for the season seem to take any excuse to be closed.
I'm not complaining though. Not yet.
As promised I have been working on single image constructions a bit more thoroughly, and the one I have to show today is appropriately of the hill up above our apartment.
