On Saturday morning we went up to the market, to get some bread, fruit & vegetables, and anything else that took our fancy, but one of the main reasons was to catch a few mobile performances in the town that morning as part of the Festival des Voix. The first was a 5-person acappella group, Tangonella, who sang tango numbers and other styles and were pretty good, we followed them from site to site and were impressed and entertained. Here is a snippet from one of their numbers in front of the Abbaye.

One thing we noticed while near the Abbaye was that the “fat ladies” sculptures that have been a feature of Moissac for many years have all disappeared, and been replaced by a collection of polished metal sculptures with different themes in different parts of town. The ones in front of the Abbaye now look like this. While the new sculptures are quirky, they don’t have the same “homeliness” of the fat ladies, but i guess they will grow on us over time.

After Tangonella had performed at several locations, they announced that they would perform one more set in the middle of the Market, and promised a “big finish”. So off they moved with the audience following behind. As they went down the street connecting the Abbaye with the Marketplace, they met the next act that would follow them at noon, our old favourites from previous years, Ça Va Valser, who then did an impromptu number as an appetiser.

Now we faced a dilemma, should we follow Tangonella or Ça Va Valser? But given the promise of a “big finish” and seeing how good they had been so far, we went with Tangonella into the middle of the market. And their “big finish” was a bit of a surprise. Given that they had been singing traditional songs so far, we did not expect them to break out with a good old Aussie song “Highway to Hell”. It seems that everyone in France loves AC/DC (such as Ça Va Valser, who have played AC/DC on their accordians many times in previous years).

While watching Tangonella, we bumped into good friend Veronique, so afterwards we went up to Cafe Skrakos for a midday drink with her and another friend. After we ordered, they took over the piano in the cafe and Veronique started singing some French songs, much to the delight of a couple of NZ ladies who had stopped in Moissac for the day on their walk to Compostella. They couldn’t believe they’d stumbled into such an "authentic” piece of French culture.

When we got back to the boat, I realised we were running out of water, so it was time to fill the 1500 litre tank. Also, since it was getting pretty hot, it was time to put the ”tent” back over the dogbox window. As I was doing this, we realised that Artemis, with good Dutch friends Jack and Sonne, were coming into port from the west. Last year, Sonne broke her wrist, and was incapacitated for much of the season. This year we found out that Jack had broken his forearm yesterday in Agen, when he stepped backwards while doing some work on the rear deck, but forgot that he had already opened the hatch down to the engine room! You can guess the rest, and he hit his arm on the side of the opening on the way down, breaking two pieces of wood (Karate-Kid style) but also breaking his arm. Some friends from Moissac drove to Agen this morning, and brought Artemis back home to Moissac with the crew. Jack will now be laid up and unable to barge for a couple of weeks.

In the evening, we went uptown again for another concert, but it was a disappointing event with a local choir, who lacked sound quality or stage presence (unlike this morning's performance). So it was back home for a relatively early night.