Delayed Response..

This is a very delayed response to requests for entertainment. I did sit down on April 11th, but then went for a walk, sat to watch the National, got caught up by the female rowing Blues and that was it, more good intentions out the window.

Three months, well, 14 weeks after an operation on my left foot, when four toes were broken and reset, I am still slightly hobbling about, impatient and looking askance at the axolotl on the end of my leg, now, thankfully, a thinner axolotl than a fortnight back, but wondering if will ever feel like mine.
I write all that horribly conscious that one fan of this blog would wonder what I'm whingeing about, but as he makes jokes about the one-legged robin in his garden, I'll press on.
That's what Dr Beauchamps said, after one month,
 "Press on it, Madame, poussez". And after two,
"Marche, Madame, marche". I don't think this familiarity indicates that he now regards us as friends, I think it's an order.
 So I keep on, up the lane past Mathilde's organic smallholding, into the woods where Francis says there are 64 varieties of edible mushrooms, hesitantly up the track which disintegrates into soft ruts filled with water and along to the back vineyards and plum orchards.
I'm not sure if it is my foot proper doing the walking, or my stout boot. I looked online at Dr Foot where I discovered that after six months I will be
"..back to normal and able to start jogging again." This is good, as I have not been jogging for 21 years, since our GP told me I might prefer to have the use of my hips and knees when I was 80 and since I was neither unfit nor overweight (then) I'd do better to stick to walking.

But it seems ages since these boots were tramping over the Pyrénées foothills in the beautiful Béarn with J and B, only six months ago, or strolling down short tracks in the Black Forest where we couldn't make head nor tail of the inadequate map we'd been sold so chose to do lots of short routes and scurry back to the car at the café for coffee and apfelkuchen. And it is forever ago since we returned to our regular home from home in the Lakes; goodness I miss those Fells now.
It is hard to avoid nostalgie the longer we wait for the house to sell. We are faced with a third summer of filling tubs with geraniums, planting flowers by the gates, and now plan to revamp the big, unused salon next door, even though that means getting rid of the 'old people's furniture' that some viewers have been unable to see round, and buying replacements. All in search of the sale that eludes so many people now in a property market full of ancient stone monuments like Jarletou!

Many compensations, the turning of the seasons is always enjoyable: summer evenings in our courtyard with visitors and at the producer's markets with tables full of friends, the autumn atmosphere; hunts, gunfire up in the woods and deer and boar running through the vines opposite the kitchen then emerging smugly at sunset when the chasseurs have given up and gone home, and the sun flames on the turning trees and vines. the peace of winter, frozen geraniums hanging from pots looking like trailing seaweed, iced roses, the garden filling with robins, tits and finches, including, sometimes, a rare hawfinch.

Now it is Spring again, the Agents all promising to bring potential buyers. Despite the bargains to be had by sterling zone buyers, it has been American, Belgian and French who have come recently. We are told we are on shortlists. We wait.
The changeable weather gives us excuses to carry on some winter pursuits sometimes, me a tapestry, the ipad, Paul a bit of tool-making in the workshop, as we watch the April downpours drench the chestnut candles. Rain keeps us from the lopping, weeding, strimming and mowing that will be continually necessary until the heat stops the rampant growth.
My photo for the day was to have been a carpet of 'Snow in Summer' but today it would be 'Rain on Snow In Summer'.

I have pretty well given up on social media. Fewer of you than ever are on Facebook, where, lately, I am bombarded by political sheets from 38 Degrees, and Amnesty and Open Democracy make moral demands to Share, Share; where I find I am feeling more and more argumentative with people I don't know in various Groups, and where something written by a total stranger on one of the above political pages was used by people I knew and had thought friends to make ridiculous accusations about me. And I can't make head nor tail of Twitter. Listening to Cerys as she described 'following a conversation' about a blues singer, I thought, 'Conversation? How are any Tweets a conversation?'
I'd rather have a proper conversation with you lot by email. And we have facetime now (just warn me if you are going to Facetime me so I can comb my hair,) and I suppose this blog is a bit of a one-sided conversation, until some of you reply. I love getting your replies. Most of you have been friends for so long, Marian, Bar, Dr M B, PH, TF SH-B for 50 years,  most others for 40, wonderful. Thank you. Miss you.