u/becane

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The pigsties have been like that for at least 25 years, but the little converted toilet block has undergone several changes. I remember there being three doors in 2000, though boarded-up.

The hill that the village is built on rises steeply above the sties. The toilet-block looks directly down on them.

The village got main drainage, or sewers, in 1975. Up until then covered cesspits served for the big houses, while buckets and 'night-soil' collectors did for the ordinary folk. The toilet-block came soon after the sewers.

Do you see where this is going?

[But it is only a theory albeit supported by historical, and some contemporary, documentation regarding the use of human waste].

Every summer I park next to this door, climb onto the car roof and pick purple figs.

Found in the attic of an old French house, amongst letters & postcards and papers going back to 1864.

Claire E. inherited the house in the early 1900's while still in her teens. Her parents died from syphilis. Her brother Pierre also, a few years later, during the first world war.

She lived there with her housekeeper, Maria, and the chauffeur/estate-manager, Elie. He would drive her to the new railway station, to go to boarding-school in Carcassonne for the week.

She had an admirer on that train – a boy from another wealthy family in our village, Jean Lebrau who became a published poet. They exchanged postcards.

The newspapers of the era are in tatters, but the letters & postcards are intact, tho' barely legible. The hat, with its starched-cloth flowers, is still bright and cheerful, and holds nothing of the sadness to come.

[We're south of Toulouse.]

"For the Perfect Gardener"

"Seeds for Kitchen Gardens, Fodder Crops, and Flowers"

One of my handbooks, Shewell-Cooper, emphasises the importance of 'a good seedsman' – but I manage to get by with garden-centres and Lidl!

A decade ago it was estimated that half the tomatoes eaten in France were grown by kitchen-gardeners.

Much of the country's 'noise' may come from the urban centres – but it is still very much a rural nation. The word paysan is not derogatory in the least.