There is something very special about a southern French Sunday.

It is the day above all when all the elements of French custom, character and raison d'etre merge in the most natural and joyful way. It's the most important day of the week for my neighbours, dedicated to family and friends, food, wine and long hours of enjoying the here and now.

Last Sunday, going to visit friends 20 minutes away for an apero in their walled garden in the heart of the Gers garlic-growing country, I got lost. It is not an unusual occurrence, so I always add another 20 minutes to my journey time unless I'm just walking to next door. Sometimes, even then.

The Lomagne, you see, is an ever-increasing set of circles and all villages can be approached from many different routes. Nobody else shares this belief with me, but then few – none actually – place their faith as I do in the knowledge that whichever way I'm facing must be north.

It's amazing how often I am, not that I've any true awareness of the other points on the compass either so it's all relevant. But north, unless I'm going south, seems a good place to start.

Anyway, knowing that at some point I would reach my destination I bowled along through hamlets, by farmhouses, around new-build villas, just enjoying the snatches of life I saw and heard.

I went up roads and peered down heat-hazed valleys I'd never passed before, though I could only have been 30km from my house. It was one of those days when the air-conditioning blows ice through the car and every so often you turn it off and open the window to check it is still roasting.

In one garden, under a wisteria-laden shelter, at least a dozen were gathered as children and dogs played under a garden hose in the 30C heat. It was 4.30pm and lunch always starts with aperos and amuse bouches at mid-day, so they had been idling and enjoying their day for several hours. (Idling. Why did I write that? It has the cold, northern echo of disapproval, and as these days I'm idling my life away, a strange choice of word.)

With my window down, I heard the shrieks from the children, the barks from the dogs, and the burble of happy, well-fed, well-watered people at peace with themselves and each other. The sound of contentment. They would have been in the final stages of a feast to you and me – a simple Sunday lunch to them.

Passing a village house with a small garden in front, I glimpsed two octogenarians sitting upright on plastic chairs under a shady porch dripping with roses. Madame, in full-dress pinny, stockings and battered black straw hat, glared at the unfamiliar car. Monsieur, his sleeves rolled back, his dark Sunday trousers absorbing the ferocious heat, was filling in a crossword. Perhaps their children and children's children were long gone to the city and family lunch was now an infrequent happening.

In the new houses, younger couples were splashing with small children in large blow-up paddling pools, or leaping into overground pools – now frequently seen by the side of the raw villas. But in every garden, even those still to be formed, the hens were busying themselves in their dust bowls, the odd donkey or goat munched away, kicking up an irritable leg at the flies, and dogs launched themselves from the bushes to harass the car.

Roselyn, after a week's hard work in other people's houses, barely blinks when told Patric's family will be coming for lunch. She turns out a meal for 12, sometimes 15, without a second's thought on her one full day off. "Bof," she says. "It's easy. It's happiness, isn't it? To sit at a table and watch the day pass with family and friends, good food and wine. C'est normale, non?"

I explain that, for us, although there are exceptions, it's not normal. She doesn't believe me.

The previous Sunday I had lunched at the Auberge de Bardigues. The pattern, albeit at a more haute bourgeois level, was repeated. At a neighbouring table, four generations, the latest a babe in arms, were working their way through a gourmet menu. At the centre of the table, the matriarch, again in her 80s, tucked into food and wine with a wonderful gusto, her eyes gleaming with pleasure at her family.

Another table for perhaps 15 had been set up as some birthday celebration. Again, the eldest took centre stage; their views listened to with genuine respect and interest – their wishes anticipated. The children knew their place and kept to it. If one became fractious he or she was whisked immediately away, only allowed to return if behaving.

One can't say it's the influence of the sun that creates this coming together in perfect harmony with nature. It happens all year round; only the dishes change to reflect the seasons.

But it takes the sun to draw the families out and give us foreigners unforgettable snapshots of an enviable vie francaise. n

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