NORMALLY around this time, the neighbouring village of Puygaillard is putting the final touches to the arrangements for the village fete. Nothing much changes year after year except, perhaps, the long and hearty menu, usually involving a variation on cassoulet or canard.

Charcouterie and a salad of some kind kicks it off and, of course, there will be wine on each of the long trestle tables. One thing is certain – it will not start until at least 9pm; the men will gather at the apero bar and the women will sit together at the tables – waiting, waiting, waiting.

The truck and workers who bring the marquee to the side of the two roads and spend a couple of days erecting it, are not quite here yet. When they are, Pierrot will often be found helping as are the other chasseurs who swig pastis and guffaw incomprehensibly.

Pierrot drinks very rarely and then only a polite sip but he basks in the company of other men and preens in childlike awe of his own masculinity. It was at this fete, when the band finally started to play at midnight, that I watched him dance with the Maire – like two cocks strutting around each other in full plumage.

Miriam sat, mutely waiting for when he’d take her the 2kms home – uncomplaining, accepting. I think her generation will be the last of the country women in La France Profonde to permit such louche treatment.

After the first few years I stopped going. At first the sameness of it all; the rigidity; the simplicity; charmed and intrigued me as I worked out the family connections, the feuds, the traditions, but we spoiled city people are easily bored. What once entranced, when it becomes the familiar, brings restlessness and ennui in its wake. It is our curse. Or mine at least.

But I have always seen the meal and the following day’s tanque contests as the curtain opener to a summer of fetes, festivals, night markets, spectacles and traditions begun in the gloom of time – pinpricks of hope and joy when the bounty is gathered and thanks and offerings given to the old gods who need placating far, far more than the Christian one.

In the larger villages and towns, the tourists flock to these, for all are welcome. They will forever remember the warmth, the rich smells of spit roasted foods, the music, all within the setting of a cobbled mediaeval square with churches the size of small cathedrals looming over all.

They will remember the sun-drenched ripeness of tomatoes and softly sweated goats’ cheeses; the spring of the bread roughly torn and soaked in olive oil, its crust both hard and soft against the teeth.

Remember the rough local wine in thick tumblers, and the competing smells of bougainvillea and jasmine, lazily waving in the gentle breeze that brings relief.

But above all they will remember the camaraderie, the easy laughter and the historic joy of another winter survived, another crop gathered….or at least their basic understanding of it all.

For few of us live that life now in our own countries nor, in truth, would want to. We only want to reap the rewards, not put in the hard slog of many of the men and women breaking briefly to enjoy their work.

And few could have foreseen that this year it is has all come to an end. The hugs, the double kisses of that summer are mere memories now and gatherings such as this can lead to viral contamination or worse – death.

So far, the French are dealing with it with good and patient grace despite their reputation – often unfair – for unruliness and rebellion.

But then they’re a pragmatic people – whose previous generations have lived through famine, war, occupation, invasion and torture.

Buried not too deep in their genes is the stoicism of their ancestors, the harshness of reality and bad times that are always ready to knock at their doors.

Of course, I write in particular of the paysans who surround me, care for and look out for me.

Like us all, they can be sly, intractable, jealous, petty-minded feudsters whose rows continue through time when the cause has long been forgotten.

But their core is a soft, though never sentimental, heart that can be easily moved.

Do I romanticise them? No doubt, for I see and feel only a fraction of that which is accessible to those of us from another culture. And I could no more have endured their lives than I could now.

We will be lucky if any will gather in numbers to break bread, dance and sing this summer. It will be looked at again in July but I think all of us know in our hearts it will be next year before the old ways can return.

As a vulnerable person – one with chronic illness – I will be going nowhere until a cure or a vaccine is found. But I count myself lucky to be here and I wish to remain here – in all ways.

And don’t despair of the France you’ve lost this summer. When, when, please God, it’s all over, we’ll still be here. All will be, in time, what it once was.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.