As our Dave told Magritte: Ceci n'est pas un ashtray

As Artistes à Suivre prolongs its weekend of unadulterated sogginess, I feel it necessary to fall back on Fa's own philosopher Dave the Underdog.

I should explain that Artistes à Suivre is an annual shindig in which 40 or so artists prop up their bits and pieces in halls, homes, gardens and any other suitable space in la haute vallée de l'Aude.

Un-artists like me get to trog around the hinterland, dutifully admiring and hopefully coughing up. This time we've got a super four-day faire le pont bank holiday weekend. Except it keeps pissing down.

Not wishing to un-jaunty this account, I thought I'd start with a quick re-cap of recent progress at the Cafédefa which cunningly took place avant le deluge.

Long-time followers of this most indefatigable of chronicles will remember that Dave is (normally . . .) the belovéd of Marie, proprietress and reine de Fa. Always a handy fellow, he's been working away at the art concréte himself, except this bit's mostly made of wood; to whit, the fab new terrace in the (nice and sunny) pic.

The observant will note that the aforementioned construction is delightfully set about with wooden troughs for plants, the only drawback being that the happy band of regulars at the CDF between them smoke about three million fags a day.

Hence the erudite legend applied to the planters in big red letters:

Ce n'est pas une pipe - Réne Magritte
Ce n'est pas un cendrier* - Dave et Marie

Well I thought it was great but, of course, had to point out that that the quote is "Ceci" and not "Ce". Obviously I only mentioned it because I'm a real clever dick pain in the butt sometimes . . .

*Cendrier = ashtray