It was looking a bit threatening, but it had been like that all day, so we didn’t even take the umbrella [The kiss of death, as we should have known]. When we got there, we decided to sit outside under the awning and watch the people go by. The waiter brought us our wine, and we sat chatting and watching the sun set on some pretty dramatic clouds, and eavesdropping on 3 people sitting behind us in the restaurant, whom we thought were speaking English – You don’t hear much English spoken in Toulouse, so it caught our attention. We had been there, maybe 45 minutes when the waiter came out to us and said “`A deux minutes, ??????????????” – we couldn’t understand the last word, so he ran into the restaurant, to the people we thought were British, and spoke to one of them. The man turned around to us and said “ Apocalypse”! Which was exactly what the waiter had said to us. It’s the same word in French, but pronounced differently, so we didn’t recognize it. Sure enough, 2 minutes later, the heavens opened.
We haven’t seen a thunderstorm like that since we were in Wisconsin Lightening and thunder following each other so immediately that we knew the storm was directly over us, pouring rain – the street was a river in minutes – and hail as big as marbles.
For, maybe, 10 minutes we continued sitting outside, under the awning, but eventually the wind picked up and the awning was leaking, so we fled inside the café and [yes, you guessed it] ordered another glass of wine, because it was obvious that we weren’t going anywhere, anytime soon!
We sat down at a table for two not far from the three people whom we had thought were speaking English. We struck up a conversation and found that the older couple was British, and lived in the Lake District, and the other man
[the one whom the waiter had asked about “Apocalypse”] is a university professor who teaches English here in Toulouse. And here comes the “woo, woo” part: Until 2 years ago, he was an internationally known opera singer. At that time he was diagnosed with cancer, and went through a year of treatment. He is now doing well, but the problem is that once you get off the opera circuit, it’s very difficult to get back on again, so now he is teaching English in Toulouse. It turns out that he sang with the Toulouse Opera Company 6 years ago and fell in love with the town; so much so that 4 years ago he purchased a home here. He told us that Toulouse is the #1 opera company in France, after Paris. How about that opera connection just popping up out of nowhere?
Now, while we’re having this conversation [and, incidentally, discovering that we are all huge Monty Python fans,] it’s continuing to rain buckets, and because the front of the restaurant is still wide open, the water is being driven across the restaurant floor all the way to where we are sitting, about 25 feet from the front. The waiter kept sweeping it out, but it just kept coming in again. At some point we said to him, “Le deluge, eh?” A French, as well as English word that we know, not from studying French, but from history! King Louis 15’s motto was, “Apres moi, le deluge” and he wasn’t kidding.
To make a long story interminable, the violent part of the storm only lasted about 30 minutes or so, and by 9:30 we were saying our goodbyes, hoping to run into each other again, and heading back to our apartment.
Today, [Friday] the Toulouse newspaper was full of the story, using words like “Apocalypse” and “Deluge” What an amazing evening!
Ed and Polley
PS – On Friday night, as we were on our way home from the Capitole, it started to rain , so we again stopped at the Papagayo, to get under the awning. The Papagayo faces west and the sun was just starting to set.
It was a very dramatic sky, so Ed photographed the entire process.
Pretty soon, the waiter came out to tell us that the people to whom he was serving dinner inside the restaurant wondered aloud why Ed was taking “the same picture over and over” “Because,” the waiter told them, “It’s not the same picture.” Then he sang, “Dee dee dee dee, Dee dee dee dee” – The theme from “The Twilight Zone” !
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