Deluging with colour every garden and house in the village, tumbling in profusion out of stone troughs along the winding streets, hanging from baskets on every veranda or window-ledge, and climbing up the walls of the houses, the flowers lift your heart on the lovely sunshiny day of mid-September. And yet it all looks casual and unplanned - just natural. But this shore of Lac Leman in Switzerland - just over the French border - has its counterparts elsewhere in this lovely country for holidaying.
The expedition to a lakeside cafΘ/restaurant was basically to savour again one of the specialities of the area, filet de perche, and to enjoy the sun. Who remembers the time when, it is said, we exported a lot of these perch to Switzerland, as the former Inland Fisheries Trust was clearing trout lakes of coarse fish? Often to make way for rainbow trout. Doubtful if this apparently never-ending supply of perch can all come from local sources.
Your table sits right on the edge of the harbour, slightly shaded from the brilliant sun. The harbour itself is home mostly to smallish motor-boats and other familial craft. And no sooner are you seated than birds come swimming to you to be fed. Four brown swans, almost as big as their parents, which are snoozing on the slipway; there are mallards in some numbers. There are coots. The birds give value for the few crumbs of bread you throw to them. Looking down on the "stunning dark green glossy head" of the drake, as Cabot puts it, it's a pleasure multiplied by their number. Busy squabblings, but all seem to get fed. A couple of years ago, frogs were to be seen casually examining the underside of boats. Looking for what? None today. Maybe waiting for a quieter time. Handsome, the parent swans (Mute Swans) when they get up from their dozing and demand to be fed. Lovely orange beaks with a black base and forehead knob, bigger in the male than the female.
The extra temperature of the area, of course, adds to your pleasure. It's not all restaurant, this village; people work in the fields and people commute to Geneva. A newspaper caption to a photograph of the quayside referred once to the village as `kitch'. If beauty of flowers and foliage and almost clinically tidy winding streets are kitch, most of us would have it.
As to the fish dish, everyone coming to the area should have it - at least once. Try everything on holiday. And anyway, relax and watch the yachts out on the blue, and the mountain shapes all round. A bit more sunshine, a few extra degrees of heat, does wonders for you? Y