Last Tango in Toulouse Read Online Free

organisation of local festivities such as village feasts or celebrations. Local government lies at the heart of the commune and everyone is passionately interested in local political matters.
    There are several English families already living either full- or part-time in the village and now, of course, a couple of Australians who will come and go and create a ripple of local interest. The post office opens only three mornings a week and there are rumours that it might close due to lack of business, not unlike post offices in country towns all over Australia. The rumours spur the locals into writing letters and sending cards and packagesonce again, in fear of losing this wonderful traditional service. There is a local school that takes children through infants and primary; then they must travel to Prayssac or Cahors for secondary education. There are two bars, one of which also operates as a pizzeria restaurant; there’s a very fine charcuterie run by the local butcher who is a highly respected figure in the community and always prepares the main course for the village feasts in the surrounding region; and there’s an alimentation, or corner store, which stocks all the convenience items any local resident or holiday-maker could require, from light bulbs to gourmet cheeses to regional wines and boot polish. The boulangerie is also very well regarded in the district, and locals have their cakes and tarts for birthday and anniversary celebrations made to order rather than going to the bother of making them themselves. There is also a garage that sells bottled gas for cooking stoves as well as petrol, and you can register your car and have all manner of mechanical and electrical repairs done there. Indeed, if you didn’t feel the need to see a doctor or dentist you could cheerfully stay put in Frayssinet-le-Gelat twenty-four hours a day every day of the year. It is a self-contained haven, and many of the older locals rarely step outside the village precinct; it’s much easier to shop locally than go through the hassle of driving to a larger centre further afield in search of a supermarket or hardware store.
    Several decades ago the village would have contained a much wider range of shops and services. The church would have been open for mass every Sunday instead of just one Sunday in four. There would have been a village doctor and midwife and other shops, such as the hairdresser’s which once occupied the front part of our downstairs main room. The fact that locals can now drive to a larger centre, perhaps only ten kilometres away, hasmeant that these facilities have become more spread out among the villages.
    Exploring the village backstreets and byways, I am enchanted by the number of gardens, especially potagers, that are tucked away in every corner. I sometimes wonder how the weekly markets make a profit when so many people grow their own produce, but I am quite relieved when I realise that my own little house and courtyard has no space for such an endeavour – the only two plants are an old red climbing rose and a wisteria which have tangled together to create a mass of colour every spring over the old stone barn. I am perfectly happy to leave it at that! This may surprise friends who regard me as a committed gardener but I am well aware of how impossible it is to maintain a garden when you are around for only a few months each year. Other part-time foreign residents in the village pay a small fortune for their gardens to be tended in their absence, and I know that we will have expenses enough with the house without having to pay for the garden.
    My lack of passion for gardening in France also reminds me that I have changed quite a bit over the last few years. Once I would visualise garden beds and pots overflowing with flowers at every opportunity, but now I feel quite ambivalent about all the work involved. It seems to me that I have spent half my adult life on my hands and knees weeding. Now I am