I mentioned yesterday that I was technicianing for Marianne this morning.
And so I was. We were doing the pot d’acceuil at Bussieres for the tourists this morning.
The weather was fine and so they decided to hold it outside, even though there was a fair wind blowing.
Music was provided by Rick the Belgian trailer guy on the ‘cello and a girl friend of his on accordion. I really enjoy listening to those two playing and indeed they did not disappoint this morning – that is, until the tragedy occurred.
Halfway through the proceedings they stopped for a breather. Rick stood his ‘cello on the tripod and went over to chat to someone he knew.
Just at that very moment a violent gust of wind picked up his ‘cello, hurled it down the street and smashed it into a stone wall.
And “smashed” was the appropriate word too.
35 years he’s had that ‘cello. He was devastated, and so were all of us. It’s an awful thing to happen to someone.
I’ve had my bass guitar for that length of time and I know how I would feel if something were to happen to it.
I felt really sorry for Rick.
All of that put rather a damper on the proceedings.
It’s really hard to focus and have a good time when you’ve been the witness to a personal tragedy such as this.
What made matters worse was that the event was very poorly attended. I’m not sure what had happened to all of the publicity but it certainly didn’t reach the hands of the people whom it was intended to reach
So after that tragedy we went into Pionsat for the kermesse – or more to the point, for the midday meal at the kermesse. Marianne had reserved a table for her and some friends and I took along my butties because of course you won’t find anything there that I might be able to eat.
It comes as a huge surprise to most people when you tell them that the site that they know today as Pionsat is not in fact the original site of the town.
I’m standing roughly where the original site of the town might have been, looking back at the present site of Pionsat with the zoom lens on my camera
We are about one kilometre south of the present site, at a lieu-dit or hamlet known as Durat,
There was said to be an early medieval fortress here at Durat, but no-one is quite sure where.
they say that the fortress has been completely dismantled and that nothing whatever remains – and that they are surprised by this.
This mound here is my best guess, although there is nothing that has ever been found to prove it.
Remember that building that we saw just now on what might have been the castle mound?
I went for a little probe around and I noticed this. Of course, there is nothing whatever to suggest that this is any part of the original fortress, even if the fortress had been built of stone, but it is certainly significant.
People have this strange idea about castles being made out of stone – like in the film The Vikings starring Kirk Douglas.
That is clearly an anachronism.
Stone-built castles wouldn’t come onto the scene for another 100 years. Wood would have been the more usual building material round about this time. A wood castle “completely disappearing” wouldn’t be too much of a surprise
On our way out to Durat we passed another significant Pionsat landmark.
This concerns a citizen of Pionsat, one Désiré Chaffraix, who left the town to go to seek his fortune in the USA.
And having made his pile (some say in the brothels of New Orleans but no-one has ever dared put that in writing), he returned home round about the turn of the 20th Century.
He fancied himself as a “man of the people” and as there was an agricultural recession in the area at the time, he used his fortune to employ the locals to build three huge mansions.
This was one of the earliest make-work projects for the unemployed, but there seems to be little doubt that he was doing it for a rather sinister purpose.
He had the idea that he would lead some kind of new political movement in the region, and used these projects as a means of “encouraging” the locals to vote for him
Of course the locals took his money and started to work on his project, but at the next round of elections, the perfidious locals voted for his opponent.
In an evident fit of pique, Chaffraix stopped the construction, cut off the funds and moved away. And left behind three magnificent but only half-finished stately mansions.
And here they stand, even today, like the Maison Durat which is one of these three unfinished tributes to the ambitions of Désiré Chaffraix.
On our way back into town we were treated by Marianne to a guided tour of the Chateau de Pionsat.
It’s not been possible to visit the chateau for a number of years now because it’s been undergoing a programme of major renovation, so we wre quite lucky.
And Marianne was quite pleased too. The chateau is her chou-chou and she delights in having the opportunity to show people around her celebrated pile.
Not that there’s as much to see of it as there would have been 300 years ago, that’s for sure.
You only have to look at the dressed stone used in some of the most banal buildings in Pionsat dating from the 19th Century to know where much of it has gone.
It’s actually in two parts – a Medieval part that dates from the time of the 100 Years War and was built on the instructions of Charles V as a barrier to marauding English troops from the Aquitaine, and the second part is from a couple of centuries later.
After the Revolution it fell into disrepair but was later listed as a Historic Monument and is now slowly being pieced together.
We finished everything by about 19:30 and I came home.
Completely worn out and it’s supposed to be a bank holiday – a day of rest – too.
But at least we had a pile of rain this evening, and the garden didn’t half need it;.
And I really do feel sorry for Rick the Trailer Guy and his cello.
What I had wanted to do was to see if there might be any trace of the old walls still remaining. When we had been here before, I’d had a good prowl around and had made a mental note of a couple of places that might be likely.
