Surviving Provence: Romance, Reality and Wild Boars

By Barbara Farber

Surviving Provence is a humorous account of the people (and animals) who share our daily life in the South of France. It is a far cry from an ode to lavender and sunflowers. Although my husband and I were both born in the United States, we have spent the greater part of our lives in Europe, mostly in The Netherlands. Leaving our working years and Amsterdam behind us, we settled into our huge white elephant of a house in Provence. The house had been ours for 20 years but only as a destination for summer vacations. As a friend told us, "You live in a fool's paradise until you come here to reside permanently." And was he right! Living here full time is a combination of love, frustration and amazement.When the chicken man at our local market scolded me for not reserving one of his roasted delicacies in advance, and the flower vendor told me if I cut flowers from my garden the stars would cry, I knew our life had changed. Complaining that our olive trees were not producing very much, our Portuguese/French tree cutter suggested I talk to them. He was serious and I did. The next year we had 400 kilos of olives.Rabbits and wild boars destroy our well-manicured grass. The post office lady in her yellow car gives cookies to our three dogs when she delivers our mail. A small dog drinks beer at a local caf? with his master. The pharmacist gives me a recommendation for my wrinkles, in a voice loud enough for all his clients to profit from. I learn some quaint French expressions from the plumber, not however, to be used in polite society. Our tennis pro collects shirts, like others do stamps. A longhaired hippie cries because he is cutting down a dead tree. There are encounters with temperamental painters, carpenters, masons, hunters, firemen and spiritual beekeepers.Relations with their neighbors brings out the combative instinct in the French. There are clashes about water and property lines, but also absurd issues such as a hairdresser's dispute over a whistling parrot, the unjust case of stolen figs and a smoking pizza oven among others. Of course food and wine play an important role in the book. The French have very precise eating and drinking habits, quite different from our Anglo-Saxon ways. There are no restaurant recommendations, only wonderful Proven?al recipes from a friend, some with a delightful literary twist. There are also descriptions of disastrous dinner parties, mine, as well as some to which we have been invited. The house is the star of the book. It is a perfect example of Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame, becoming much better known than its owners. It has been a setting for TV soup commercials. Oversized women's clothes for a Swiss mail order catalogue were photographed in the garden, supervised by the oversize Swiss client. Fashion photography of very chic men's underwear brought us a sexy Los Angeles male model, who posed in very minimal shorts, outside in November, smiling and shivering the whole time. The newest model of Peugeot was unveiled on our terrace. Several TV series, almost always involving a murder or kidnapping, brought film crews for weeks. This is just a taste of what awaits you in Surviving Provence.I hope, dear reader, you will enjoy this book as much as I did writing it. It is meant to make you smile.Barbara Farber

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1976858690
• ISBN13: 9781976858697
• Release Date: January 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.6" x 5.0"