Autumn

At 6.45, in glimmering light, a mist beyond the red-checked curtain, I was crouching by the woodburner, carefully feeding small sticks into the embers, coaxing the friendly monster back to life. A small flame rewarded me, how little it takes to give one huge pleasure. Not normally an early riser, I had been unable to find the knob to wind me back an hour last night, and there was a certain glow in the mist that hinted of a glorious day to come that got me up.
As the mist shifted later, I jumped out of bed, ( yes, dear Reader, I had retired again, with Whittard's Assam and 'Winter In Madrid',) grabbed jeans, fleece and camera and rushed out to catch images before the light changed. I'll post a few here later; having taken a few between the vines, the fusillade from the chasseurs up in the woods drove me to the safety of our own garden.

Yesterday I did the walk 'round the block' that some of you have done with us when you arrived after a journey. The vines from which we picked merlot or sauvingnon grapes in September are now stripped and turning sage and mustard. Against pale french navy hills, the yellow candles of poplars stood, and here and there a field maple blazed, its rich colours stealing the eye from the less showy oaks and chestnuts. (Our other local walk, around the lake, takes us round a mirror on which are reflected ducks and herons, black and white blobs on a plate of blue.) A woman passes on a higher path. We wave. She is not near enough for me to ask 'have I missed the Grues?'

The grues, - cranes- are one of the sights and sounds of autumn and early spring. My diary records their passage on the 28th and 29th October, in the previous 2 years, so perhaps they've not yet passed, although it has been cold for a week. You hear them first; they are named for their call; perhaps one evening as they arrive at a nearby lake to settle for the night, or the next morning as they wait for the sun to warm them up a bit, encouraging them to spiral and jostle and flap, finally arranging themselves into an orderly and stately upward reel into the sky, where they circle for a while, arguing about the direction, until a vote is taken and they head South for Africa once more. Or you hear them and look around, then up, searching the sky for the source of 500 birds 'grrrue-grrue'-ing and there they are, far higher than you would have thought from the volume of the sound, a long, trailing, wavering 'V' that trembles up and down with each wing beat. You can still hear them long after they've gone. Wonderful.

Passerelles. Birds of passage. Which we are, now. From the moment we made our decision to leave our home, we were detatching ourselves from Home. And where is that, now, exactly? Sometimes I ache with homesickness, but I am not as I was when I left, and to where would I return? Unlike the swallow and the crane, we can never return the the same place twice, at least not without feeling how different it is, we are, now. I look at Britain now with a judgement influenced by how 'we do things here', although the French-encompassing 'we' doesn't fit me either. I still struggle with the everyday communication of non-school French. I have French acquaintances, but friends?... Unless I bump into someone from the village, I haven't a clue what's going on in the community; who's died, who's left, ( although leaving home is something few French do.)
For some time I felt totally adrift, cut off from 'there', committed to 'here' but no part of it, alienated from it. Sometimes I woke in a panic in the night. Sometimes I wept.
But now I am part of a network of similar migratory creatures of several nationalities. We share our experiences of dislocation, our very different views of Britain. The footpaths, fields, ponds and woods are completely familiar now - I know the terroir, where the hunt looks for pigeons, where for deer, which vines grow red wines, which white, and even, sometimes, who owns which vinyard. Distant views are familiar too, although I don't always know the names of the hills I know roughly where they are. But I can never be rooted in this soil and I don't know which soil I might one day really feel is Home.
It is less hard now, we have, after all, come to land, settled for the night, 'found our feet'. We pay our taxes, are in the Health System, (and still will be after Sarkhozy's spiteful law disallows that sanctuary to several people I know. As if that will make any difference to his Budget deficit!), we have French driving licences and French Wills; conquering each of these bureaucratic nightmares has been a little triumph and several, an excuse for a bottle of Fizz!
But one day we will spiral upward, arguing about which way to go......