I can’t believe that this entry marks our fifth year of attending La Nuit du Spardos, St Pardoux’s annual night market/music festival which took place on Saturday. Our first Spardos was in 2010, when we still lived with crazy Sharon in Badaillac. Our new (as they were then) friends, Rigit had invited us along, having themselves been tipped off by Nat & Jill – whom we didn’t even know until that night. We had no idea at the time that it would end up becoming our local, never to be missed summer event.
Before I get to the weekend’s activity though, here’s a quick recap of last week. And quick indeed it will be as we did very little at all of interest! The weather has been ok, though given the UK was experiencing a 30 degree heat-wave, I was a little bitter that here it was closer to 25 and occasionally cloudy. That it should be like this in June I can cope with (grudgingly) but when it spills over into July and August, I can’t help get a bit bitter. It’s not cold by any stretch, but nor is it as hot as it should be, and the forecast is for more stormy, unsettled weather to come. Anyway, obligatory moan about the weather over. We had no social activities on all week but have both had work to keep us busy. Matt has been working on the new design of his French property client’s website, and has also had a few tweaks and changes to make on the site he put together for his friend Abby in the States.
For me, I have gotten sign-off on the design from Nerissa, my friend Miranda’s sister, for whom I am doing a site to promote her counselling practise. Now the design’s sorted, I just need the text from her and then I can get on and build it. In the interim, I have been involved with Matt’s upcoming storage website project for a friend of his in London. I was asked to put together a flat site advertising their business, which amounted to about a day’s worth of work all told. He already had someone come up with a design idea and just needed it turning into a functioning site. This is done and the site is now live. That will probably be it for my involvement: next, Matt will need to take what I’ve done and add the necessary functionality to allow people to book and pay for the service via the site.
Our veggie plot is beginning to bear fruit: we’ve had a few courgettes and recently also some tomatoes. We’re due to be inundated with lots more of both in the coming weeks too. The stars of our plot however, are our special plants. All of them are tall, bushy and luscious (and also, far too visible from the road unfortunately).
Ok, I really can’t think of anything else to say about the week, so let’s skip to the fun part: Spardos! Held annually on the last Saturday in July, this is apparently the largest night market in the area and has an array of stalls selling toys, trinkets, food and clothes, as well as live music, street food, and special meals put on by the restaurants. The event is named after the mysterious beverage that is only ever made and sold this one night. It’s wine-based and strong, is mixed in a giant vat, and is dished out by men dressed, for some reason, as monks.
We set off around 8 and, as we always do, made plans to meet Nat and Jill down there. We kicked off with a Spardos each while we waited for the ladies and then had a hot dog to line our stomachs. This was peak eating time, so we had a bit of a long wait. Luckily though, we were within ear-shot of an excellent band who did a lot of 80s covers, often rearranged to be a bit more ‘rocky’. They had a synth player as well as a guitarist, and an excellent female lead vocalist.
One thing we both realised as the evening went on is how many more people we seem to know these days. Within minutes of arriving, we ran into Philippe, who was headed back to see the monks, an empty 2-litre plastic bottle in hand. We chatted very briefly but left him to it, sensing that he was on a mission and would not be coherent for long. Over the course of the evening, we also saw Jenny’s ex, Guillaume and his son Mathias, Martine from down the road, Jenny and Franck and also our new friends Hannah and Louis, who were randomly in town and called in to see what was going on.
Once we’d found the ladies, we settled down at a bench and had some chips washed down with beer. Another band was playing nearby and to our amusement, the first track we caught was Rebel Rebel by David Bowie – a new addition to our own gig repertoire (we played it better though, I think). They too were entertaining, but not quite in the same league as the first group.
After our food, we got some more Spardos from the monks and then took in a third group. This was made up of a singer/guitarist and a bass guitarist/backing singer. Like us, they had no drummer, so were relying on a backing track accompaniment. Unlike us though, they’d spent a lot more money on their kit and had lights, a smoke machine and some lovely instruments. They were also rather more talented than we are. While watching this group, we ran into Sue and Bob, the couple who provide our lovely curry service. They were having a good boogie to the music and (in Sue’s case at least) were already a few sheets to the wind. Sue can be a formiddable woman even when sober, and for a moment, it looked like there was going to be an additional public spectacle to watch. Apparently, Sue had jostled a woman while dancing, and the lady in question had given her a telling off. Big mistake… Sue responded in kind and then made a point of dancing aggressively close to the other lady from then on. Fearing the worst, we left that particular powder keg and went off to top up our glasses.
Sue wasn’t the only source of friction that evening either, unfortunately. Jill has had a bit of a health scare recently: she has some form of tumour in her neck. The doctors are confident it is benign, but nonetheless, it is a scary thing and the surgery to remove it will be quite involved. To add to this stress, she had a visit recently from her estranged sister that went about as poorly as expected, and then a visit from Nat’s sister, with whom she had a falling out. They’ve also been very busy with their gites, and have had hail damage to their property from the recent big storm. All told, Jill was understandably not in the best place mentally.
This year’s Spardos had an added bonus treat: they have fireworks in St Pardoux every year for Bastille Day, but this year’s display was cancelled due to bad weather so they used them for Spardos instead. We’ve always missed the Bastille fireworks, so were pleased that we didn’t this year after all. And indeed, they did not disappoint! They went on for a good 15 minutes and were far more professional than we were expecting.
Next up, we went to catch the last band of the evening. This was a nearly-all-girl supergroup featuring female guitarist, bassist, drummer, brass section and dancers, with one man on keyboard and another doing additional percussion. They played a mix of older classics like Santana as well as covers of newer songs including some Amy Winehouse. All their stuff was covered in a Latino style and all of them were extremely professional musicians. I was utterly bowled over and more than a little smitten when the lead guitarist ripped into Carlos Santana with ease. The ladies left us around midnight and we stayed on for maybe another hour before coming home for our habitual nightcap and silly film before bed. And that concludes the story of Spardos 2014!