Le Mauvais Temps

We’ve had lousy weather since Jom left. That’s over 5 days of gloominess; gray skies, torrential downpours, howling winds. The thunder shakes the walls of Chez Michel while the lightening illuminates all the rooms at night, keeping me awake so that I have successfully finished the last of Harry Potter. The damage the lousy weather has had on the region is amazing – everyone is inexplicably depressed and angry… myself included.

The first day we didn’t mind the cold air (yes, it’s cold – I’ve worn nothing but pants and long-sleeved shirts and for the first time in all the days I’ve spent here, I wish for nothing more than a sweatshirt or turtleneck) and Grandma passed it off with a very cute comment: “The gods are angry that my children aren’t here!” But the gods couldn’t have been angry enough to make us suffer all week.

At work, Monsieur Cuerée, my boss and co-owner of Hotel Sube, came to me with a sad face. It had been quiet for bit, the thunder off over the water and the lightening only making occasional flashes in the sky, but the gods must have turned on the shower because suddenly giant globs of water were falling in thick curtains across St.Tropez. “This isn’t right,” he said as we watched people scrambling in from the balcony. “We do not have a culture here for rain. The people are not prepared for bad weather.”

No shit. If I liked chilly winds or lots of rain, I would have stayed in Boston.

After work, all we can do is have a lovely lunch, drink some afternoon cocktails, play Rummy Cube or Cribbage, read, have dinner, and go to bed. I miss the beach, the crique, the water and sun. I miss curling up in the hammock to loose myself in the imaginative adventures of novels. It’s quite depressing; rain in the Côte d’Azur.

One of my clients asked me if it was every sunny here. I almost fell over. There’s nothing but sun here! “All I can say is that I’ve seen more bad weather this week than I have in all of my time here combined.”

We went down the beach this afternoon to assess the damage and have a coffee. The sand is piled high, tiny mountains lining the coast. Seaweed has turned the usually turquoise water into a mucky brown. But – alas – the sun is breaking through and I must go aside to remind myself what a blue sky looks like…