How could I possibly have forgotten the wine ??

Comes the turning of the season, and the luscious grape is yet burgeoning upon the groaning vine . . . blah, blah, etc, etc and other such likewise pseudo-poetic arty bollocks.

It's no good; I shall have to come clean. Somehow in more than two years of Le Blog Normalement Persistente, I have never yet managed to mention les vendanges, or grape harvest.

Not only is this France, but it is my self-imposed mission to chronicle, both exhaustively and exhaustingly, the mélange of minor details that constitute the calendar hereabouts. Oops . . .

What's even more puzzling is that girlfriend Claire and I are normally pretty switched on to the pre-autumnal Season of Plenty which has just started.

Claire's last act before departing back to work at the lycée in Canet, was to compose some deeply fab blackberry jam, which is already disappearing at a rate of knots. In but a few weeks, I shall be persuading her to make some more crème de marron from our usually gigantic sweet chestnut harvest.

It has to be said that it is a thoroughly balls-aching job to peel umpteen chestnuts, when you can buy the finished item for a mere €1 a pot down at le supermarché. But Claire's crème de la crème de marron is a sheer delight, and not to be mentioned even on the same planet as some contemptible commercial item.

And only yesterday I selected the first of the purple figs, our own dear couilles du Pape (alias the Pope's bollocks; see expositions, previous). Thus it is strange, as well as a major clanger, to have somehow omitted the grape harvest.

Matters came to a head when Niffy Louis, Fa's Undisputed Champion Layabout announced down at le café that he was going to work for a couple of weeks. When we'd picked ourselves off the floor and the walls had stopped cracking with shock, all became clear: He was going to help with les vendanges . . .

It should be explained that les vendanges is just about the only paid work you can do in France without it affecting your dole money . . . evidently there is one sacred place where even l'administration* fears to tread . . . imagine the row if there were no-one to pick the grapes. There again, there is no need for self-inflicted mental cruelty.

Thus forcibly reminded, I selected a suitable quill with a view to recalling a few vendanges moments: I must admit that I never done it myself. Back in 2002, the first year we were here, my old mate Andrew did les vendanges.

He told me that he'd never worked harder in his life than for those nine days. Being as Andrew was no stranger to 18-hour days during his tougher moments in business, I regarded this information rather as a warning . . . and thereafter kept my distance. As a nifty-fingered guitarist, I also have a natural aversion to le secateur.

You can always tell that the harvest has started, because as soon as all the camper van drivers are locked up back in their coven (or wherever it is that they lurk out of season), they are immediately replaced by Postman Pat tractors.

These vehicles, towing trailers full of grapes, always look as though they've been put in a vice and squashed, just like PP's van in the aforementioned kid's prog. I figure they have to be narrow to get between the vines.

Being not very stable, they have a top speed of about 20km/hour. However, most of us do want wine, even as we don't want camper vans, so this is a time to be calm and zen when you are late for an appointment and stuck behind a PP tractor.

Just a short while after les vendanges, we will have la fête du vin nouveau. This is when we all get together for a discreet tincture, or preview of the new wine.

I'd strongly advise you not to get pissed on it: New wine possesses all sorts of deeply interesting molecules, most of them not yet mellowed by maturity. Now you may not believe in all that End of the World tosh, which I am prone to ridicule periodically. But faced with le hangover du vin nouveau, you may well be moved to reconsider. Patience is a virtue: You have been warned . . .

* I have been forbidden by Claire to make further excessively satirical comment on French bureaucracy. This is because les magnifiques fonctionnaires à la prefecture changed my driving licence in a stunningly efficient nine days. Considering that both the photo and the address on my old English one were deeply out of date, they were remarkably obliging. Merci!