This is one of the windows in our Alençon apartment. It is, without question, one of the most wonderful things about home.
Windows in France are large, and they open inwards towards you, leaving a great wide expanse of light and air. Once you are used to them the tiny sliding windows of North America seem so constrained and claustrophobic.
Because they are so large, and because we have windows on both the front and back of our apartment, we have a steady breeze at most times. When France is in the midst of high temperatures and a drought, this makes such an incredible difference. We are cool. And, when temperatures peak in the afternoon we have long heavy blue drapes that keep out the hot sunshine.
Here’s our other living room window, at a later time of the day - right now actually. You can see at a least seven or eight neighbouring houses.
I actually spend an awful lot of time gazing out of these windows. Every house is a different age, and style, and height, and I delight in the variety that you can enjoy when you don’t have endless zoning regulations.
Every roof and wall has a different colour and style of tiles, and the ages, conditions, and plants growing on the tiles is different on each building. Some are black, some are brown, and some are almost golden if the light hits them right. And as these tiles age over the decades they crack, and they break, and sometimes one will even be missing entirely. There is a visual richness and complexity that is endlessly fascinating, and ever changing as the sun, clouds, and weather move across the sky.
The sky, of course, is always changing; sometimes blue, sometimes clouded, and often filled with a stunningly bright sun, or a great full moon. It is a beautiful sky.
High atop each of these roofs are TV antennas. I don’t know if they actually are used any longer, but again every one is different, and confusingly they also all point in different directions. They speak to the peak of a technology that was very, very close to being replaced entirely by cable, and the Internet.
There is life on these roofs too. There are mosses, and plants, and even small trees growing at the very top of chimneys and in corners. And of course there are birds of many types, especially les colombes de deuil, the mourning doves that still charm me every time that I hear them.
Sometimes people’s windows are open, and sometimes they are closed. Almost every window is dark by 10 pm in Alençon. It’s common for people to hang laundry out their window to dry. Very occasionally you’ll hear music from inside an apartment or house, but it’s rare - Alençon people are quiet.
Here’s another picture from outside our window, aiming up the Rue du Val Noble towards the Le Château des Ducs, the castle that until not too many years ago was used as prison. Yes, that’s our garbage truck.
Because the streets are narrow the traffic is slower, except for the crazy motorcycle riders, all of whom seem to have removed their mufflers. Because our windows are open almost all of the time we hear cars, and teenagers, and families, and school-children walking past below.
So far this year we have seen fireworks from these windows, and helicopters heading to land at the hospital at the side of the river Sarthe. And, almost daily, I hear great French fighter jets blasting across the sky above us, although I’ve yet to be quick enough to also see them.
And last month had a week long festival of street performers, and at some point every evening a crowd of people, and musicians, and giant puppets would come around the corner and under our windows.
I love these windows. Looking out of them, leaning out of them, I feel that I am really part of this wonderful community, that my existence and being extends beyond these four walls and into the streets and skies and houses that surround us. Our great, glorious windows are what allow us to share in living in Alençon.