Diaporama : peintures murales en l'église de Saint-Aignan

Yesterday I posted some photos of the church in Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, where we live. It was built in the 11th and 12th centuries over and even older church that the Michelin green guide calls une église des grottes, which now serves as the crypt of the "newer" church. Here's a two-minute slideshow made up of a dozen photos of the wall paintings in that crypt.

I've posted at least some of these photos before, but I have re-processed them for this slideshow using Photoshop. It's pretty dark down in the crypt, so I'm sure I used the camera's flash to take them. There are half a dozen still photos of some the paintings in this post from 2013.

L'Église de Saint-Aignan

I've spent a good hour this morning looking back at some of the photos I've taken in Saint-Aignan in past years. These are from June 2006.

Saint-Aignan's church was built in the 11th and 12 centuries. This is the newer church — the upper church — which was built on top of an older church. The lower church serves now as the crypt. It's known for the ancient paintings that adorn its walls. I'll have to find some photos of those to post.

Thinking back, I realize that 2006 was one of the busiest we've had in Saint-Aignan since we came to live here in 2003. We had so many visitors from the U.S. We did so much driving in the little Peugeot, including trips to see the Mont Saint-Michel and to spend time in Paris. We did the "grand tour" of famous Loire Valley sights many times over, and we had a lot of fun.

This year, 2020, because of the coronavirus pandemic, will be just the opposite. I doubt we'll be going anywhere. Short trips to an outdoor market or a supermarket will be our main entertainment.

I went out yesterday. I drove the Peugeot down to the bakery in the village center, two or three miles from our house. The village seemed deserted. I wanted both bread and wine, and the bakery sells local wines — the ones made by our neighbors.

Yesterday was the day our grand confinement was loosened up again. We no longer are restricted to staying within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of our legal residence. We can go where we want. Cafés and restaurants are now allowed to re-open. The Beauval zoo, Saint-Aignan's biggest attraction, with probably a million visitors in 2019, re-opened too. I was surprised to see almost nobody in our village. There was one customer ahead of me in the bakery. I put on my mask, got out of the car, and waited outside until he exited the shop. My shopping trip was a success. I figured it was better to go get wine from the bakery than to go into a big supermarket. I haven't done that since March 14.

Dix-sept ans

The Normandy coast in June 2003

Yesterday was the 37th anniversary of the day in 1983 when Walt and I became a couple. Today is the 17th anniversary of the day in 2003 when we arrived in France to start the third installment of our life together. Washington DC, San Francisco CA, and now the Loire Valley in France for longer than I ever thought about when we first came to live here.

Etretat, on the Normandy coast

It was the year of the Grande Canicule, the great heat wave in France, when so many died but fewer than this year during the pandemic. We had tried to get here by June 1, to celebrate our 20th anniversary, but circumstances I don't even remember prevented that. We were, however, able to leave the U.S. on June 1 and arrive in Paris on June 2.

Lunch with the dog in a café in Etretat

We drove from the airport up to Rouen in Normandy — old friends there had told us we could stay with them for a few days to get over jet lag. They had a small apartment we could stay in.

We had rented a fairly big car by French standards, because we had a few big suitcases
and also a kennel for our dog, Collette (with Walt, above), to travel and sleep in.

We rested for a couple of days, and then on June 5 we drove up to the Channel coast to have lunch in the town of Etretat and do some sightseeing. It was amazing to be in Normandy during such hot weather — no wind, no rain, just bright blue skies and water, with the sun beating down. (We're having the same kind of weather here today.)

I posted some photos of those first days in Rouen a few years ago (there are many more photos of Rouen on this blog), so here are some that I took on that beautiful day on the Normandy coast. Two or three days later we left Rouen and drove down to the Loire Valley to take possession of our house outside Saint-Aignan and start cleaning up the house and preparing to move in. The yard was completely overgrown after being neglected for six or eight weeks before our arrival.

Trente-sept ans

Thirty-seven years ago today, in 1983, Walt and I moved in together. We were both living in Arlington, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington DC, having just moved there from Paris in the summer of 1982. Our first apartment together was on Capitol Hill, just 800 meters from the U.S. Capitol building. I had started working nearby with CHM in January 1983. By 1984, Walt was working in the offices of a U.S. member of congress in the same neighborhood.

Walt and I at Muir Woods sometime in the late 1980s, when we were young

In 1986, Walt and I decided to move to California. He wanted to continue his studies out there. I was ready to leave DC but I didn't know what I'd do next. We found an apartment in San Francisco, near SF City College on the south side of the city, where Walt was enrolled as a student. Less than a year later, Walt transferred to the University of California at Berkeley. We moved into downtown SF, where I was working, in 1987.

Walt graduates from Berkeley with a masters degree

CHM was a frequent visitor to California back then. His long-time companion Frank lived in the desert in southern California, not far from Palm Springs and the Mexican border. CHM continued working in DC until 1997 or so, when he bought a house in the desert. We started driving down there (it was 9 or 10 hours on the road each way) to see him and that part of the state. Then Walt and I decided to move to France and did so on our 20th anniversary together, in 2003.

Walt and I in the desert, photo by CHM

We ended up living in the San Francisco area for about 17½ years. Walt finished his studies at Berkeley in early 1992, with a bachelor's degree in architecture and two masters degrees. By then, I had found a job with a software company in Silicon Valley, more than 40 miles south of SF. Walt found a job down there too, and in April 1992 we relocated ourselves again. I was employed as an editor and manager at Apple computer from 1992 to 1998.








Walt on a camping trip in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California

We moved back to SF in 1995, when we found a house we could afford to buy in the first SF neighborhood we had lived in. During all those years, until 2003, we explored California. One way we did that was to go on camping trips in the state's many big parks, both the coast and up in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our friend Sue, who has visited us three or four times here in France, lived in the foothills of the mountains near Sacramento — still does — and she loved the camping trips too.

Us camping, photo by Sue

It's amazing to realize that we will soon have lived in Saint-Aignan for just as long as we lived in California. But here we are. I wish Sue and CHM could come to France this summer, as they each had planned to do. But for circumstances...




Walt took this photo of me and CHM in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris in 1992