Fall has really arrived here this week. People had been warning us that we were having an exceptionally long summer, and not to get used to the sun, because she was going to disappear for the next 6 months. So, the sun has disappeared, and in its place we have clouds, with a kind of permanent drizzle and three or four times a day the most incredible downpours I've ever seen (yes, worse than Bellingham). Mimi and I got caught in one of the first downpours. We were fooled by the drizzle into thinking we could take a walk with our Bellingham Gortex to protect us, but we clearly did not know what we were dealing with. We were so drenched in about 2 seconds that we didn't even bother trying to jump into our raincoats (we had gotten hot racing back from the park to be in time to pick the boys up from school). The only inconvenience, once I was completely soaked and didn't care about getting wetter, was that I was wearing a black bra under a yellow shirt which is opaque when dry, but, unbeknownst to me, not when wet. So the wine salesguy from up the street who gives good wine advice saw me, and a lot of other people I don't know... Well... French women do go topless.

Fall also has meant discovering one more technologically retarded aspect of French life. When it started getting cold and damp, we started looking for some kind of thermostat or centralized heating turn-on button. At first we looked sort of leisurely, just walking through the apartment, and then, at least for me who spends all my days here, it started to get more urgent and I started actively looking for it, and then finally we launched a full fledged campaign to find the darned thing, with no luck. we pushed various buttons and turned various switches and valves, with the result that one of our hot water heaters (we have three) leaks and we have no hot water in the kitchen (boy, when the house is freezing, it's really unpleasant doing the dishes with cold water). A chauffagiste (a heating person) is supposed to be coming today, only this is France, you know, so he might go have a verre (a glass of something alcoholic) or a café arrosé (coffee with a little smt thrown in) instead.

The last thing I want to write about fall is more poetic, and I promise not to complain about this part. Fall at the market is really lovely. There are dozens of apple varieties with names like reine des reinettes, reinette grises, drap d'or, rubinettes, pilotes, all better one than the next. There are dozens of wild mushroom varieties (mmmm, the girolles are so good, cooked with rabbit), and then there are the chataignes, the chestnuts (the eatable ones, not the horse chestnuts that fall all over Cornwall park, those came about a month ago). The chataignes are everywhere, as decorations in the windows of shops, for sale in the fruit stalls, for sale glazed in the bakeries (boulangeries), pastry-shops (patisseries) and candy-shops (confiseries), and on my running paths, where they trip me with their spiky green shells (not a good idea to fall on them) and their slick brown selves. Old men and women crowd my running paths to gather them. It really feels French. My brother brought us some a couple of weeks ago when they visited, and I duly scored each one and roasted them, and then, when I put the first one in my mouth, it was like going back straight to my childhood, when my mother would take us , every fall to the woods behind my grandparents' apartment outside Paris to gather them. However, my children and husband, who did not grow up with the wonderful tradition of chestnuts in the fall, did not like them. So, I cleaned them and cooked them into a sweet paste according to a recipe Anna sent me from bellingham... and no one liked them still (except for me, but there was no way even I could eat that many chestnuts). So I tried to lighten my chestnut paste with egg whites and whipped cream, which made them quite delicious, but still only to myself. So, well, if I come home really fat, it will be because I like the food too much, what with its reminding me of my childhood and all, and my family likes it too little, its being a bit too sophisticated for them (!).

Oh, yes, and one more thing about fall: the vacherins are out! It's a cheese made in the swiss alps with milk gathered from cows who have just been released into the high mountain pastures for the very first spring grass after a winter eating hay in the lowlands. Somehow, this special grass gives the milk, and hence the cheese, a special taste. Then it takes this long for the cheese to mature, and it's only available from November to March. Sean agrees that it's the best cheese he's ever had. It seeps out of its crust and you eat the soft creamy stuff with a spoon.

One more thing of note, and sorry I have no photo of it, because it really was unbelievable. The farmers of the Pays de la Loire (the area for which Nantes is the capital, something like a tiny state, a county, really, but with much more of a national character) came to Nantes to demonstrate. They had a procession of tractors, a booming canon that roared every five minutes, and they covered the city with straw, chicken feathers, rotting apple mush, and fires lit on the major boulevards. And I'm not exaggerating when I say they covered the street with that stuff, it was really knee deep. I tried to listen to their speeches (they were having their rally right by our house) but it was too boring, all these little details about the price of porc and the usages of chicken in the EU. Also, Tipomme was terrified by the canons. So I can't really tell you what it was this demonstration was supposed to accomplish. I guess in the States, the farmers would get together and pay a lobyist. Here, they stage this complicated production that sets people like Sean against them, because it makes them seem hostile and angry not at the government, but at the city people. But at least the city people know that they're mad, even if we don't know why, so it's perhaps more democratic this way, in a 'knowledge' and not 'power' meaning of democratic.

I went to my first seminar in psychoanalysis yesterday. We discussed several chapters of Freud's Introductory lectures in Psych., but since all the other participants are Lacanians, I was a little lost (I gather Lacan is mostly interested in language and the clues it can give to the contents of the unconscious. But that's about all I gathered. I'm supposed to read more Lacan for next time, but I think for general readability, I prefer Freud greatly.) Still, the members of the seminar are quite nice, not at all pretentious as I'd feared, no one pontificated or gave lessons, and guess who couldn't shut up, despite her rusty french and her complete lack of any expertise? Yes, that's right, the rude American among them.

That's all for now, pictures for next time.