This is number twenty of the seventy poems I am writing to celebrate my forthcoming seventieth birthday. I am using music to stimulate ideas for my poetry and this week’s poem is inspired by two french troubadours who perform every week at the night market in St Maurin, a small French village in the Lot et Garonne.
Here is the fantastic Louis Armstrong singing “Just a Gigalo” Why this song? All will be revealed…
During the months of July and August many of the small villages in South West France have night markets. The town square will be set up with trestle tables and chairs and local producers will set up stalls selling hot food, wine etc. You pick a table and buy the food and wine and then listen to the entertainment. The village of St Maurin was one of the first to tun the Marche Gormand nights and they have proved to be very successful with about 400 people packing the square on a Wednesday night.
The band is always the same and the opening number is “Just a Gigalo”
It always ends up with dancing, young and old, french and foreign tourists all doing the Madison or the birdie song. It sound terrible, I know, but there is something magical about it all, I that I can’t really explain.
It starts at the beginning of July and the first thing you notice is the arrival of the tourists especially the English. The Lot et Garonne is just below the Dordogne and as the private schools in England break up for their summer holidays before the state schools it’s a certain type of holiday maker that arrives first.
Le Premier Marché
St Maurin buzzes with excitement
In the square are two familiar faces
Dressed in matching shirts
Accordion and guitar in hand
They begin another year
They begin the first Marche
I’m just a gigolo and everywhere I go
People know the part, I’m playin’
Paid for every dance, sellin’ each romance
Ooh, what they’re sayin’
Tables and plastic chairs emerge
Men dress in their faded shirts
Brushing the dust from their clean shorts
Woman press their best dresses
French fresh faced children
Floating kisses across upturned cheeks
Their parents prepare the buffet
Magret, Moules and Malbec
Listening for the first rumble
Of the Chelsea tractors
Just a gigolo, everywhere I go
People know the part I’m playing
Paid for every dance
Selling each romance
Trundling through the countryside
Blinking in the Tarn sunlight
The black beasts return
Disgorging blond children
Recently demobbed from private schools
The summer house has been opened
Cobwebs and floors swept
The pool has been cleaned
The grass has been cut
The fridge has been stocked
The day before they arrived
By that marvellous Portuguese woman
That Jocelyn recommended
Every night some heart betraying
There will come a day
Youth will pass away
Father’s in pressed jeans
Pink polo shirts and a panama hat
Dancing with their estranged children
Darkened teenagers lurch in corners
From around the world they come
From the depths of Surrey
From the flatlands of Holland
From the mountains of Bavaria
They begin another year
They begin the first Marché
Then what will they say about me
When the end comes I know
They’ll say just a gigolo
As life goes on without me
© Jeff Price July 2017
Lyrics of “Just a Gigalo” by Irving Caesar
