Our man in Marciac - part two
It's 3am on Friday morning, and I'm woken by the sound of someone snoring. Must just be the people in the tent next to mine. It does seem strangely loud though... As if the snoring were coming from... inside my tent? A quick look to the left, a quick look to the right. Nobody in my tent. Phew. Back to bed.
8am. What's that sound? An alarm clock going off on someone's phone... I look at mine to check, but no, it's definitely not my phone that's going off. Various sighs and curses come from the surrounding tents as people are woken by the continuing alarm. The snoring continues... When will they turn the alarm off...?
A cough, a splutter, another good few curses and the snoring has stopped. And now the alarm has stopped. And now the snoring has begun again. I seriously envy how quickly this person seems to be able to fall asleep.
Hang on, is that something - or someone - pressed against my tent? Whatever it is it just moved... And that looks suspiciously like a hand just visible through the little gap under the tent door. The snoring definitely sounds like it's coming from very nearby... Time to open the zip and investigate...
The man - another volunteer - who was indeed sleeping just outside my tent, and using my padded bike bag as a comfortable pillow (yes, he had drooled all over it), woke with a start and slinked off back to his own tent (just a few metres away) before I had the chance to reel off any French curses myself. That spot must just have looked so much more appealing than his tent on his return to the campsite the night before... Oh well, there's always hope that justice might have been served by him getting bike oil all over his left cheek...
Temperatures have soared even higher during this, my second week in Marciac. The reputation I seem to have gained among the volunteers as l'anglais qui a apporté son vélo en France meant that I was elected to lead a small peloton to a beautiful lake on Tuesday, where we swam in the very blue water, picnicked in the shade, and swam some more...and some more - and of course someone had brought their saxophone with them so there was musical accompaniment too. Everyone seemed to get incredibly excited about the Saint-Nectaire cheese we had picked up on the way at Super U for the picnic, and I have to say the excitement was justified - French picnics really are something different. Somehow can't imagine English uni students going crazy in the same way about a block of Cheddar or Red Leicester...
Meanwhile my solo cycle rides this week have taken me south, to Trie-sur-Baïse and west, to Saint-Mont, where the wine we're served with our repas bénévoles comes from. My contention that cars are more patient with cyclists in France than in England still stands (haven't had a single beep or dangerous overtake in two weeks), even if no other French person believes me...
Trying to escape the heat on Saturday, the last day of the festival, I went to a concert featuring a trio at L'Astrada, Marciac's state-of-the-art concert hall, which serves the village all the year round with various musical and drama performances. It's clear to see how useful the festival must be for funding community projects like this. Marciac also has its own cinema, tucked away in what was once an Augustine convent - I enjoyed watching a 2020 documentary there which focused on 3 Marciacais and veteran bénévoles at the festival, reminiscing about their many decades' service - I recognised two of the three faces from among bénévoles I had seen across the past two weeks, but I think the third (a very funny duck farmer and proud wearer of the official Jazz in Marciac branded beret) must since have retired from his post as the festival's stock controller.
As the festival drew to a close and the Wynton Marsalis octet finished their third encore on Saturday night, the mammoth task of clearing the chapiteau of chairs began. First peel off the numbered label on each chair, then free the chairs from the supports which keep them in straight lines, then stack them in piles of 5, then in piles of 8 and 9, then in piles of 17 (which, we quickly learnt, don't stay upright on their own), then load them onto trolleys, each with six stacks on them, then wheel the trolleys outside for the forklift truck to pick up: repeat that many, many times and the job was done by 3am - apparently narrowly missing out on setting a new time record. There's always next year, eh...
Many a goodbye and à l'année prochaine later, I was at the bus stop, enjoying the music being provided by a quartet who clearly either didn't know or didn't care that the festival was over - that's the attitude! Next stop: Souel, a small village (I see a pattern emerging...) just south of Cordes-sur-Ciel.
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