Happy Little Bees

 Deadheading. Terry’n’Mary Rose, snip. Sweet peas that are mostly peas. Snip, snip. Oregano, thyme, lavender snip chop snip. For days, with temperatures in the low 30s I had felt unable to do it, creeping up the garden from patch of shade to patch of shade - oh! all those fluffy aster heads, wilting roses, drooping brown buddleia candles, spiky geum pincushions - to look at everything ‘gone over’ as my ma-in-law would have said. Back past the lime green parsley flowers putting on a far better display than the pathetic Ammi Majus.

I’ll do it later, and retreat to the dark, cool house, flinging out my usual thought of ‘Idiots’ towards a nearby cottage where they throw their south-facing windows wide on hot days. Perhaps they like glaring sun bringing its 33c heat into their bedrooms. Emma, arriving yesterday said “Thank goodness, it’s so cool in here”. She has finally acknowledged the French practice of opening the house to the cool of the night and shutting it against the heat of the day works.

But later it is still 30c and enervated, we flop and watch Bob Ross.

A week ago golden marjoram, lemon thyme, lavenders pale and dark, were full of happy little bees. I imagine, fancifully, the bank they are on, in front of a hot, white sky as a happy little mountain just here. Let’s colour in the sky with lots of little criss-crossing primary colours. The golden herbs invading the heucheras, swallowing the penstemons, the leaning lavenders, all painted with a knife and a decorator’s paintbrush with magical rapidity and in alarming colours. Then, over the clever floral effects and threatening sky, let’s put, right here, yes, a big cloud of Vandyke Brown happy little bees. Noo.oo.o you’ve covered that perfectly rendered cloud, that happy little tree that was just right. We do wonder if Barb Rarse had had some sort of visual disturbance, as they say Monet had, that makes him see black skies with violet skies, navy blue seas with lime green waves, rocks, trees, sheds, mountains, and paths always brown. What would he have done with the landscapes of Cumbria, Torridon, Snowdonia? Had he heard on Payne’s Grey, sepia, light olive green? I wonder if he is on French tv? Inside their shuttered houses, the people are busy painting and crafting. All the DIY stores have aisles with craft materials of all kinds.

But he, Bob, has been one of our lockdown heroes, with Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin on Facebook, Grayson and Phillipa Perry with Art Club, Craig Charles and RadMac on 6 Music, Neil Oliver’s history books and the birds and our garden. Now we watch it succumb to heat and watch people who have been trapped in distant towns flock to ‘our’ beaches so we still can’t go there. But Mr Oliver’s books have given us a list of places to explore. Dorset and Wiltshire are full of hill ‘forts’ and ancient sites and hidden pubs with tranquil gardens.

Orkney

By now, we should be just off the Scrabster ferry (given today’s weather the Pentland Firth would have been ‘interesting’) and on our way to Peedie Harray. We would have come via Eire, with friends in Counties Wexford, Laois and Cavan, then Ayrshire, the Hebrides, (friend on Mull,) probably through the Glens rift valley, up the East coast thus repeating our superb Celtic journey of 2018.
Or we’d have wound up the West coast and ‘across the top’.

 I have always wanted to see Knoydart, been fascinated by the less accessible Munroes like Sgurr na Ciche, fairly doable but for the long walk in - there are no roads on Knoydart.  Now, I would find them not at all doable even with my trusty walking poles, and might struggle with the long walk up Glen Dessary! So, this afternoon I have been mostly watching other people’s great youtube videos of their long walks. Stunning scenery, but I am glad not to be wild camping however amazing the sunsets and starry nights. But I am in Scotland in spirit if not in reality.

I get a little wobble now and then, wondering when we will feel safe to travel again, stay in great places, find lovely pubs and restaurants, meet interesting people. No, we are not going to the pub today. Not even the local Stour Inn. We will wait and watch what happens.
My mum would have been 100 today. We will drink to her memory with a nice Laithwaite’s Rioja and stay home, stay safe.

Today, I have been mostly - wasting time

All those good intentions I had, all those plans I made, when we realised we would be locked down, all pffttt! in the face of glorious weather.

To edit all those photographs on pc and iPad, make some photobooks, make some hard decisions about what to delete, make a back-up disc or get a spare hard drive for storage then make the scary decision to hit the delete all button. None of this has been done.

Tidy the grandchildren’s bedroom and make it a sewing room for the duration, find some decent patterns online and use up some hoarded materials. I have got no further than tidying up.

Make a ‘When we Were Young’ book for the grandchildren with drawings, paintings and photos, plus words of life in the 1950s and early 60s when it was a different world, ‘the past is another country, they do things differently there..’. I have actually bought a beautiful A4 watercolour paper moleskine and several pages have been done, plus a lockdown diary started at the back, so at least something has been started.

But when you have days like today, -no chance.
I woke early, made tea, the whole day stretched ahead. First, the phone rang. Our insurance company, discussing an issue we have ongoing. Good start. Only took 30+ minutes but that delayed breakfast. Then the post arrived with, oh dear oh dear, a new Hub. We are supposed to plug it in right away, ready for some technical change in July. My heart sinks; anything to do with our home tec causes problems. When it works, everything is fine, but when interventions have to be made, we can’t find passwords, patience or common sense.
Today was not too bad when compared with past exploits, except unplugging one set of stuff and working out where and how to plug in new stuff involved scrabbling around on the floor and banging skulls on furniture. And then vacuuming as the furniture under which things were plugged had been put there temporarily when we moved in four years ago and was still there, unshifted, and no-one had cleaned behind it. But we did succeed in producing the ‘blue for go’ light. The pc works. The device has to be signed in. All goes smoothly, amazeballs. We feel smug.

Then he tries to print something. Printer won’t work. For once we keep calm and work out why, and how to put the network and password information into it. More success and smugness.

Boxing up the old hub to return it reminds me to find a card for a friend’s birthday and then I have to venture into town where no-one seems to care about ‘the rules’ as much, to go to the PO. I notice that the C-19 testing area set up by the army is empty but for 4 gloved masked soldiers.
As I walk back with lovely bread and some bbq treats I realise it is now a) far too hot to go for a proper walk and b) nearly lunchtime anyway.

After lunch I give up. He is fossicking about with the pond in the garden with plans for a new filter box etc and I enjoy sitting in speckled shade admiring the work we have achieved in the lockdown garden and reading. Not even an improving book, but the second book in the Dublin Trilogy. (Funny but I prefer Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy books.

And so it goes, another day of lockdown drifting. I am ashamed. Vik has made a whole patchwork quilt and is taking her daily dips in the North Sea! Nic is learning Italian! Daisy is volunteering at the local Primary! Jan walks every day!
Where do they find the time!?!

Right, I’m Going In..

I arm myself with the necessary equipment.
Puffed down body warmer
Long warm cashmere fingerless gloves
Rubber gloves
Reading glasses
Spare sealable freezer bags
A biggish box to hold temporarily removed items.

Somewhere in this bottomless chest freezer in the outside shed is a joint of beef bought at Christmas for possible family visits. Well that isn’t going to happen, is it, and it needs eating up.
Right, I’m going in...
I may be some time..


I catch myself, too often, paying attention to my own breathing, in, and out.

Proof of age may be asked for...

Contemplating the eagerly awaited easing of Lockdown. (Does it warrant a capital ‘L’?). I call one of the other in-laws, whose birthday it is today. He is finding it more arduous than most of us, but unlike the rest of us retired ones, used to spending days pottering with ‘projects’, he, at 76, still works in his own business. And quite hard physical work too - no way is he ‘vulnerable’.
We agree a big get- together celebrate will be on the cards ‘once this ridiculous L thing is over’.

But will it be over for us? As small shops, then businesses, then Primary schools gradually open, as young families are released from their cramped flats and doll’s house starter homes, will the over 65s be told they should still Stay Home Stay Safe and paint a rainbow on their downstairs window?

Time to look online for hairdye peeps, and a bright lipstick, some new narrow jeans some new sunnies. Cross fingers that the daily exercise has encouraged the dropping of a few pounds and - come on folks, get dolled up and try to pass for 55, so we can strut to the pub. Pray that you don't look like Private Godfrey in that Dad’s Army episode where the platoon had to look younger, I forget why, where they ended up looking like Robert Smith but not in a good way. (The Cure). Choose a pub with a garden, pick a shady corner and send the youngest person in for the drinks. Don’t order sherry, babycham or a pint of mild, go for a bucket sized glass of pinot grigio or a pint of eurofizz. One hopes the bartender won’t squint suspiciously over the bar and ask to see proof of age. Just don’t proffer your bus pass.

Lost in Music

Drifting through another Lockdown day, hunting for a lost cd. Yesterday evening, between ‘Masterchef’ and ‘Taskmaster’ we watched another episode of ‘West Wing’. (On our second ride through its 7 Seasons and wishing the fairytale of intelligent, principled US politics could come true,). The title of the episode was ‘Somebody’s going to emergency, somebody’s going to jail’. What a track, what an album that is, I thought. Find it and play it tomorrow.

Of course, I find every Don Henley album that I have, sitting correctly between Hendrix and John Lee Hooker, except The End of the Innocence which is the album I need. So what was left of the morning was spent checking through the cds on Billy, re-filing a couple, removing two more for the charity shop, (Razorlight and Wet Wet Wet fyi), wondering who Moriarty are and planning to play it later and putting last night’s Craig Charles’ programme on bbc Sounds to listen to whilst doing some minimal am housework. Then ordering that cd from Amazon.
A pretty typical morning I’m afraid, but hey, it’s Saturday, I am truly retired and apparently vulnerable, so it’s all guilt-free. Although the choc-hazlenut croissant from lidl, saved from yesterday, and about to be eaten with a coffee, won’t be.  

Brrrr

I have just bought another bag of mealworms while I was out. The robins and blackbirds hoover them up, leaving more of the other food for the other birds. By ‘eck, petal, it’s cold. But the, it is winter, isn,t it? And local farmers are hugely relieved that fungus and crop diseases are being killed off. Who are the people shutting schools, cancelling trains, saying “ah well, it’s not worth investing in winter machinery any more.
What machinery did we have in the 50s and 60s when winter was a normal phenomenon? Gritters were two blokes on the back of a council flatbed truck with shovels. More council workers cleared crossroads and zebra crossings while car owners put onwinter tyres and got on with it. Householders did their bit by clearing paths and spreading cinders; everyone had coke stoves and open fires then. (And upstairs, no heating, frost patterns on windows and extra eiderdowns.)
Schools never closed unless the toilets, outside of course, froze up. If the boilers broke down you wore your coat in class. Although most PE Games sessions went ahead, the class in knickers and aertex shirts shivering in ice playgrounds which we had polished with slides during breaktime, sometimes it was just too snowy. Then you did wonderful Music and Movement inside, or country dancing, us Sarf Lunnon kids barefoot on bits of squished cabbage. The big coke stove in the corner of my primary school never broke down. Its heat barely reached us, it warmed our wet gloves draped on its guard, adding the smell of steaming wet wool to that of the gently souring milk. A crate of frozen bottles, with strange white laminated worms with tinfoil hats poking out of them, was placed by the stove to thaw; the unfrozen coke- warmed milk was drunk by all of us, with screwed up faces.
No school buses, everyone walked anyway, I let the red bus go to play snowplough while I save my 4d fare and waded throgh snow which filled my wellies. I do remember my dad being late to and from work sometimes as the trains from Waterloo suffered something called ‘iced up points’.
The winter of 63 turned the whole of Shirley into a playground. Perhaps we did get some time of school then? Parents got to work somehow and Granny turned us out of the house into a white world of wonderful freedom, romping over Shirley Golf Course (usually policed and forbidden to us kids, ) and the gardens of the big houses that backed on to it, their hedgerows, fences, gates totally covered by feet of snow. We did no damage, just explored these usually hidden inaccessible properties, leaving footprints and space snowmen to show we’d trespassed.

Now snow comes down and some people seem to just wait for someone else to deal with it, shovel, lay a cloak, whatever, after all, we all pay our taxes, don’t we? Although the despised public servants who helped everyone smooth their lives have long been made redundant and where does our local council charge, whatever it’s called, go? < shrug > and clean off my shovel.

Gratitude

On the last day of my sixties, I am thinking about how I feel at reaching 70, (assuming I get through the night...) and it is gratitude. Seventy is more than either parent was granted, and I still feel deeply disturbed anger about that. My father, packed off to war aged 19, away from home and girlfriend for six years,(his r’n’r spent in Alexandria; he was unable to eat figs for the rest of his life!), returned to become a lively committed member of his community, a principled and dedicated parent, and did not deserve that bloody cancer and death in his fifties. My mother, also a firm supporter of society, volunteer, community worker, recoiled from a lifetime of small c Conservatism after she saw how the people she worked with were devastated by Thatcherism, also should have had longer to enjoy the travels she looked forward to in her retirement.

What a privileged generation we post war baby boomers still are. Benefitting as we have from the hugely brave political decisions taken in the late 40s, free NHS, education, foreign policies, many of us are appalled by the sacrifice of all the progress we have enjoyed, by a couple of carelessly casual elections and a referendum. But I am grateful to have survived long enough to feel such despair at the state of our country, its betrayal by those who, wrongly, consider themselves fit to govern us.

Perhaps the angst is a symptom of my age, anyway.  Great-Grandchildren who my parents would be thrilled by, (Dad never saw his grandchildren,) are excited and enthused by the world, they will cope with it having known nothing different. Although what are we handing them, a degraded environment? Species collapse? Ecological imbalances that are a threat to every natural living thing, especially the human species? P more than despairs, it is flippant to say he is more like Victor Meldrew every day, unkind to smile at his “Dad Rants” as son calls them surruptitiously filming them on occasions. He thinks, worries, analyses all the degredations of our current political scene, appalled by the sheer inward-looking selfishness of the referendum vote, the incompetence of those determined to go ahead with it rather than bravely challenge the attitudes that caused it, the cruel judgemental opinions of some of the louder mps.

Grateful is what I am, though, I can ignore those ignorant self serving politicians and go for a walk. We live in a beautiful county, the river our town sits by is beautiful at all times of the year, with otters and fish visible in its clear waters from local paths. The sea, coastal nature reserves, rolling cliff-tops, wonderful beach cafés are a short drive away, as are dramatic hillforts with wide inspiring views from their tops.

And breathe.
Next time I talk to you, I will have to acknowledge that I am, officially old.

Ah ha! At last! Finalement! Hooray

2,000? and!? Mr G plants over 2,000 spring bulbs every year in his delightful, interesting but not large Leicestershire garden. Well, not him personally, not all of them, although I bet he pokes most of the holes with his stick. Kate will point to the site, he will dib the stick and ‘Garden Boy’ will do the planting, that’s how I see it.
And there I was standing in Homebase while P selected gate latches wondering if a bag of 20 would do plus some crocii, (although would not dream of buying them from Homebase but would go up the lane to Langton Nurseries),  I felt obliged to add a nought to that number, but with no time to buy that day as we were off to Frome with fruity mince and apfelküchen to do school runs and feed team T, O being in St Louis at the time.
It was days before we made it to the Nurseries, a messy disorganised heap of a place full of treasures. That day’s haul included local honey for 4 quid, suede garden gloves for 3, mealworms for the robin, loads of cyclamen that have brightened the house for weeks, that I have just planted outside in a freezing wind, and as well as nowhere near 200 bulbs, some paperwhites to plant up for Vik.

Last night we saw Alice Roberts at the Tivoli Theatre talking about her latest book, Tamed, 10 species that changed the world. Despite abysmal lighting and just a few slides on a big screen she interested and intrigued us all with digressions on wolves and wheat, horses and apples, and of course, the human species, mentioning also cats, bees and Michael Gove. (And has there ever been a species quite as weird and destructive as Gove?) She paced about in her usual plumage of Desiguel, silver rings and boots and we were quite star-struck.

This is nothing to do with the title above. This is not what those faithful Round Robin followers shouted as they heard I was about to post after months. No, it was me, punching the air in triumph after tearing my hair out for three days trying to work out the system Google+ is using to confound the users of blogspot since they took it over.
Bloomin’ non-tax paying geeks put on earth to frustrate us.

Incoming.. chukachukachuka..

That's me, I'm the sausage....

Feel a bit of a sausage, having almost abandoned the Round Robin now it is no longer in France. Many episodes have been written in my head since the culture shock of the return, some made it into my diary, but even that outlet suffered during the coping months in the rented house, the struggling months of the house purchase and travails with a British builder, the adjustments to almost-town dwelling. And since last June my mind races through themes, topics, opinions, wails, but my hand never wrote them out.
 I gave up facebook in despair after so many discussions/arguments with people who didn't use reason or logic, just invective. I look away from the shouty headlines that crow at me from the newspapers racked by the supermarket entrance, peddling myth and ignorance so shamelessly. I have to look elsewhere to recognise the country we left and missed; I'll get there.

Migrants

Our swallows left the other day, after days of air displays above the garden, where swarms of flying things spiralled in the warm sunshine. Then more arrived, possibly down from Britain, having a few days R'n'R before their onward flight. Further arrivals since, blackcaps, replacing the redstarts. and the robin and red squirrels are rulers of the garden once more, now the foreigners have cleared off.
 Some we are glad to see the back of, hornets both Asian and European, Oriels which squawk at dawn, and a hundred varieties of fly and things that bite. Some we won't see, the wonderful skeins of cranes will be heading South in a month, but we will have gone, flying North.

I wonder who might be glad to see the back of us? People have been very lovely, we have been hugged and patted at night markets, restaurants and caffs across the terroir, offered and given meals and gifts, and we have a collection of cards with addresses with exhortations to stay when we return as travellers. A corner of my heart will always be French now, but it is my British soul pushing us home.

Home will be, for 6 months, while our house purchase and renovation proceeds,
Damory Court Street,  Blandford Forum Dorset, full address in yr email,
after which we move down the road to Lower Bryanston, only a handful of houses there so postie should find us.

I type this in an echoing house which is taking us forever to clean, sooo boring, cleaning, no wonder I haven't been very good at it, clearly. Packing took forever, decisions about discarding, giving away, selling, throwing and I still had sleepless nights thinking it would never fit on the van with all of Paul's precious workshop, but it did, thanks to Flash Gordon's. Those of you who came and stayed, still left us with bottles of strange spirits one third full, tequila, white port, americano, armagnac, Old Nicks. Those of you who never came, You Know Who You Are, have left us with weird cocktails odd compots sweet and savoury and packets of dried peas and beans that might plant a field. Think what feasts you have missed, by never visiting, passing through. I kept telling you how near we were to the Pyrenees and Spain, so you could call in; there, you've missed your chance, we did it often, it was great!

I have fixed up an @gmail.com  but how I pick that up with no internet after Thursday 8th October I don't know. If you lose this information don't worry. In the words of the ever-intense po-faced D Day-Lewis, "Stay alive, I will find you".

Ingenuity

Several people wondered what it was about the toaster that was 'terrible'.  Do you mean to say that you all have good toasters? Toasting quickly, efficiently and evenly? On both sides?
Unless you paid over a hundred quid for it, please let me know make and stockist. And what setting you favour, for on any toaster I have ever had, 3 is barely warmed and 4 equals burnt. Often, in the mornings, from René and Denise's over the lane in Petit Jarletou, wafts the arôme of burnt toast as the Moulinex or whatever strikes again. Have we even got the technology to produce a decent toaster.

That the British and French have command of wonderful technologies is in no doubt. The Millau Bridge. Those airliners they produce jointly in Toulouse. The Caverne Chauvet.
Ou?
Who said Ou?

We saw in the paper that the Caverne, discovered above the Ardèche in 1994, by two potholers, M. Chauvet was one, was about to be opened to the public. Well, not the Chauvet cave, but the Caverne du Pont d'Arc. After the Chauvet discovery, the archeologists, anthropologists, scientists, trod, both literally and metaphorically, much more carefully than they had with Lascaux, not wanting to invest the 36,000 year old marvel with the  same environmental disaster.
For once, committees and meetings, and government intervention, produced a brilliant solution. Walkways were installed, security systems, some sort of environmental control method, and for a short time, British and French experts recorded every inch of the cave digitally, then the one entrance was sealed. Cameras and police survey it permanently. Scientific visits are allowed for only two hours, five times a year.

Then, after huge investment from the French government, the work began. Sculptors, artists, designers, model makers, began recreating the most significant areas of the cave. Every stalactite and gmite, each quartz pebble, fluted rock towers, rippled wet walls, tilted arches tiny niches, smooth rock pavements and soft sandy floors were recreated in exact detail. (On two different surfaces, an ancient artist had smeared clay to make the relief he needed. We know it was the same artist because his fingerprint on one, matches his print on the other.) a rock formation like an organ. Another like a folded pink curtain.
The amazing paintings of bears, cave lions, rhinoceros were reproduced here, near Bergerac. Many paintings show hunting scenes, and as the animals flee past you, round the rock shoulder and into the cavern, getting smaller the further they are, you realise that these hunter painters had a perfect understanding of perspective. And there are depictions of an owl. A panther, unique in prehistoric art. Handprints of children, teenagers and adults. And in the sandy resin of the floor,  beside the bones and teeth of huge animals, a human footprint, deeply moving even though it is a reproduction.
Because you realise that, not far away, the real one exists in the real cave.
All this was built inside a beautiful architectural structure that can be seen from Vallon Pont d'Arc below. So you feel like you are walking around a cave, but you are not below ground, not cold, not stumbling on an uncertain surface.

It is an amazing international cooperative achievement. For this reason, as much as the intrinsic wonder of the original cave, the whole project has been granted World Heritage status by UNESCO. It moves and inspires and makes one wonder why man cannot cooperate like this more often.

Maybe then we could have a better toaster.

E.G.B.D.F.

The French do love their acronyms. Quangos, public bodies, utilities, they all have them.

We got a letter from a four lettered acronym, to say that, on the 6th May there would be work going on and we would experience fluctuations in supply and occasional cuts in supply during the day.

I wrote 'Kettle, Pans' across the top in red and pinned the letter up where it could be seen on the 6th.

One early acronym we became familiar with was RIB. That is a piece of paper with one's bank details that everyone seemed to want when we first came here. to connect an electricity supply, EDF; to get water SAUR, to connect the phone, SRF and to join the health service CPAM, to receive payments from our savings, PSIs, 'please attach a RIB'. Then there is ERDF which controls the electricity infrastructure.
And they change, confusingly. CPAM has suddenly turned into AMELI, thus clouding a favourite film.
On the bottom of bills, look out for HT, Hors Taxe, as when the tax is added the bill is much bigger. People used to British customer service will often comment wryly or rudely on HS, hors service, signs. Just means out of order, but lack of service can apply in many situations.
SAMU is important, its emergency number is 15 and is the ambulance service. The ambulance services one sees advertised being nothing like what we mean by ambulance. You can book them for hospital appointments but cannot get one late at night when someone must go to hospital. For that, SAMU are the boys.

 Twice I have had to call 15, and a doctor answers, calming, comforting. the doctor triages over the phone and on those two occasions dispatched the emergency team, who were superbly trained and equipped. Totally different from the white coated, heavily smoking taxi driver who once brought Pa in Law and me back from Agen hospital after a check up for Des, and who banged on his blue light and siren at every threatened hold up that kept him from his friday night tipple. And kept chatting on his cb. Radio that is, CB is Carte Bleu or Carte Bancaire.

Then there is FNAC, a wonderful site, books, and every concert ticket you could want, SNCF and its super TGVs, but terrible website so we go to the local station to book tickets. Where the service is very helpful I have to admit.

So on the 6th I was blearily making the Assam and caught sight of the piece of paper that had become part of the wallpaper in the intervening days and saw the 'kettle, pans' in red. So I filled a couple of jugs and the 4litre casserole and just for good measure put a filled bucket in the bathroom.
"SAUR may switch off the water later," I reminded Paul.
Then, just as the toast was nicely toasting and the eggs were nicely poaching, (those of you who have stayed here will know that means it was wednesday), just as I was wondering to switch over from JH and politics to 6Music, off went the lights, the cooker, the grill, the radio and the clock.
Not SAUR. ERDF
"Oh well," I thought, "I can always finish the toast off in the terrible toaster."
DER.
The acronym for the terminally bewildered.

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.

What have the Romans Done For Us?

  With P&P, Peter and Valerie, in the summer kitchen, we were munching Raymong Blong's Lemon cake, with them imparting some juicy gossip about a couple who had viewed our house, (you should have seen my jaw drop and eyes widen dear Reader,) and Peter said,
"Someone should start a blog about all the Aquitaine Ex-pat gossip". They'd be run outta town, bien sur, but then I said, airily,
"Oh I have a blog",. After which I sat there feeling guilty. Not only had I eaten 2 slices of cake but I had laid claim to a blog to which I contribute but fitfully. You lot often chide me about it.. So:

What have the Romans ever done for us? - Given us bluddy purslane that's what. Not content with bestowing their ground elder on South Leicestershire,
 " So good, mia amici, with garlic and zees lovely olio from my amphora", but they then decide that hat horrid weed purslane made a good salad ingredient and infect our potager here with the stuff. (have just noticed I have used John Humphries' abhorred historic present.) We could never have eaten all the ground elder we wrestled from under the hedge to stop it getting into the fritillaries, and now we have enough salad thank you. And courgettes. And beans, tomatoes, cucumbers... Squash the size of footballs. 2 months before their harvest is due. Temperatures suddenly rose in mid-July but rain still fell every few days so vegetation went mad.
  At least the runner beans find good homes as no-one else round here seems to grow them. Otherwise people arrive at each other's barbeques, soirées gourmandes, meet-up cafés, with droopy carrier bags full of produce that they try to force on other carrier-bag-toters with identical produce.
  And I watch people buying courgettes and tomatoes in Intermarché and wonder what they do grow in their own gardens. Of course, they could be holiday makers stocking up. But home cooking is unnecessary at the moment, the tourists soon find all the soirées and night markets where we all eat while our saucepans gather dust. It's a rare chance to eat chips, with duck sausages, or pizza, or fillet steaks you pick and have griddled, or moules...

Did the Romans invent the French fry? Fry, Stephen, thinks not; it was probably a Belgian. Le Sauvetat on Fridays has the best pizzas and tasteful live music, Duras, moules and specialities from Réunion and very loud music of varying standard. The best Duras nights, Thursdays, are when Michel plays, a young accordianist who came 2nd in the French equivalent of X-Factor. Soumensac everything duck-related, on Sundays, no music but you can be pestered by strolling magicians and balloon modellers. And tonight, Tuesday, it's come round to Monteton again, with the butcher from Allemans doing a roaring trade from his van with the only edible beef we've ever had in France. Plus divine desserts and a cheese man who must be visited. And last week a superb young three-piece playing Jazz/ blues. Although all the old hands agree 'Soumensac is so passé...' it has the view, and Brigitte's wine, so, impossible to choose between them.

The shouty English have arrived and have found all these places too. The Scots and Irish holiday early, have gone, and so miss it all. They don't shout, don't impinge, although I was once asked in Leclerc where the porridge was shelved. The English do their supermarket trolley dashes in packs, trailing disgruntled 9-year-olds called Freddy and Meredith or some such. They have just torn themselves from their rented poolsides, thrown on some loose cotton toga-like thing over bikinis and come flip-flopping around the aisles, calling to each other.
"Bryony, do we need pesto?" "Have you found the barbeque spice Naomi?" and in one aisle, "Eoh, it's all English stuff, how funny, why would anyone want Scotts Porridge Oats?" (Clue's in the name, Naomi.)
 I wonder would they care if they knew how shocked the French are by their loudness and undress? Chantal told me she and her neighbours consider it 'très impoli'. I try to apologise for them, saying ruefully they wouldn't do it at home. "Alors, pourquoi ici?" she replies.

The Romans would recognise it, the sarong/toga, the sandals, the sense of entitlement.
Sometimes, after 10 years and 8 months I am barely aware that I am living in a different culture until poorer aspects of my own bring me up short.

Oh Here's Summer...

Hot hot hot. This  is so sudden; we had got used to grey skies , showers and coolth. After a burst of gardening activity in the two-week spring in April, we left seedlings and plants which were discouragingly slow growing, in the care of a friend who would come over to water if necessary,  and set off on our long-promised trip to Sicily.
Plan A had been to drive through Italy then island-hop back to France but in the end we thought we couldn't afford the time, so sadly bidding the hopes of an extra week of proper pizza and pasta goodbye we booked a cheap flight from Bordeaux, and the hire car and Agriturismos of Plan B.

After marvelling at some Greek temples in stunning locations and some weird and wonderful B and Bs, we went hunting for Montalbano. A hotel by the Med was a treat as a base, a sheltered  balcony over the sea a luxury. All the time I hummed Joni M, - Carey, 'the wind is in from Africa...'
But there was important tourist business to do so I left my lounger.
A multi-national queue (well, 6 people) politely waited as we all took turns to photograph each other outside Salvo's house at Punta Secca with more arriving as we sat at the café. The house is a B & B, booked up for months ahead, but who would want to sit on that famous breezy terrace whilst privileged Europeans trooped up, snapping away with cameras and phones?  The village had clearly benefited from the film-maker's attentions; it boasted (sorry, I've been reading too many estate agent's prose lately,) a well laid car park, clean streets, and neat houses, mostly shuttered up awaiting the season.
 In Scicli, he and his assistants would struggle to sweep up to the 'Police Station' in his beat up Fiat as the Station is in fact the Town Hall on a pedestrian precinct, busy with café tables and big umbrellas flapping in the Sicilian wind. Colourful tubs of flowers and lush palm trees gave this place, also, an air more prosperous than much of  the rest of Sicily. I expect even that bleak ruined factory on the beach, where so many horrid things seemed to happen, had been glammed up. We didn't seek that location out, although it featured on many postcards along with all the other sites we found, dunno why I bothered taking pictures when I could have bought the card. We didn't find his favourite restaurant where he often ate wonderful seafood in a howling gale either. Shame as the food was variable generally, I kept trying to find the perfect pasta & sardines...  well, it's fun trying.
Before we left for inland mountains and a glimpse of Etna we visited Ragusa and Ragusa Ibla, the town split in two by an earthquake in 1693 and the stunning place shown in the opening titles, crazy Sicilian Baroque tilted along a spine of rock with deep valleys on either side.
ps I can recommend the Camilleri books, as wacky and amusing as you'd expect if you watched the tv series; it captured them well.

Now we are back with nightingales, sudden summer, huge amounts of weeding, planting, and our own glamming up to do. We have a viewing on Friday, people are flying out especially to see the house, we have our fingers crossed that it is what they hope to see.

pps Well now I always thought Grandma's Hands was Gil Scott Heron but found out from a very enjoyable prog. on Bill Withers that I stayed up far too late to watch, after getting in from our Dance group's Soirée, that it isnae.

now that april's here..

Now that April's here I have yet to make any sourdough but have cleaned the oven. (Hooray for Oven Pride.)

From the mundane to the sublime.
- Now this will sound impossibly affected and in the worst style of all those books (written by women, I'm sorry to say, who go and live in Tuscandordogneshire and grow lemon trees,) that end up in heaps on the second-hand book stalls in Eymet market. But it's true.
Until a few days ago when April returned, we had the most perfect weather, and every evening when I closed the shutters, I stepped outside to listen to the nightingales and gaze at Mars, so large and red(ish) in the South East sky. Magical. Clear  air, vast dark ink sky with  stars coming out, glowing planets then that magical sound. The birds had given our garden a miss for a couple of years so I was thrilled that they have returned this year.
 There are far fewer goldfinches than usual, no long tailed tits seem to have flitted through, hardly any sparrows, so although there are few changes in this area of vines, pasture and woodland, somehow the environment for many creatures is changing. But we have wrens nesting in the woodshed wall and in the ivy round a plane tree, robins squaring up to each other in the figs, blue and great tits, blackbirds and thrushes and now the glorious nightingales in the big ash tree at the east end of the garden. The orioles will be here soon too, but I can do without their catty screech at dawn!
  Then a couple of nights back, instead of the nightingales it was the toads singing so I knew it must soon rain. Over the lane live Rene and Denice and the underground stream that runs from Mathilde and Francis' up the track, under our far well, (once the water source for the house, see much earlier blog,) goes down through their garden and opens to the world in a most wonderful fairy grotto, all crumbled rock outcrops, dripping trailing ferns and grasping twisted tree roots. And in the pool at its foot are natterjacks, sounds like hundreds of them chirruping away.

 And now indeed we have rain, just like last weekend. The first barbeque invitation had arrived, an Easter get together for 12 of us to admire a friend's new gas effort, v posh. And although we had to eat in the garden room a jolly time was had, one of the social occasions that have made retirement here most enjoyable! We have managed 1 BBQ of our own too, one Friday lighting the twigs in the outside cheminée and cooking too much meat, why do we always do that at barbeques?
A bit more fine would be good as there are still garden jobs to do to smarten up in case we get any house viewings. Jarletou is back on the market after 6 months and the replacement of the roof. (Except one agent, we discovered, had not removed it, as
"It seemed such a shame to take it off when you were going to put it back on; we might have found you a buyer"  !  Cheek of it.)
I doubt it, surrounded as we were for the whole of February by scaffolding, cement mixers, rubble, an enormous lorry with two massive braced arms supporting a huge extendable crane like a hooked red claw, a couple of skips and a carpet of blue plastic tarpauline to keep entrances 'clean'. And during it all, 3 guys working through showers and  downpours, although they did give up during the deluges, standing under our veranda drinking café noir and eating carrot cake, brownies and sticky date cake. It would have taken a buyer with a great deal of determination and imagination.
The inside became as mucky as out. (Sitting in our courtyard on a sunny afternoon a few days ago with the golfing pal of a friend in Devon, I was, bizarrely I thought, conversing about hoovering and how in these old stone houses you spend as long hoovering walls and beams and ceilings as you do floors. He had brought us some chilli plants and deserved more interesting chat, hey ho.)
But now the grit in the house has been hoovered and the outside is restored and the roof, source of so many sleepless worried nights in the last two years looks amazing, I hope someone will see the 'potential'.
The housing market is, we are told, picking up, with French, Belgian and Russians house-hunting in the area as well as British. But prices are not picking up, every buyer is expecting bargains and deals, we are going to be lucky to break even. < sad sighing face thingy > The possible house and garden in Dorset/Somerset is shrinking every day.
 But as Paul regularly says,
"There are worse places to be stuck", and breathing our clear air, and looking forward to dinner at Mama Chow's with friends, (oo good, chilli hit,) I know he's right.

Happy New Year

Three resolutions so far:
To watch less rubbish TV. (Especially anything purportedly for adults that features ex-Blue Peter presenters who still think their audience are twelve, and need everything explaining in words of one syllable).

To have a go at making sourdough bread.

To clean the oven. Soon.

Ah-ha, see, nothing about keeping the blog up to date. Nicola asked why I don't seem to write it so often. I thought it was because I needed the outlet; it let me put a distance between me and all the puzzling, sometimes challenging aspects of living somewhere different, to laugh, albeit wryly, at things. It kept me in touch when I was homesick, and let me let off steam when I found the proximity of the in-laws an infringement. As time went by and we became more settled, routines and involvement grew, there were fewer hours in the day to stop and stare. But I do find myself still, caught by something,
"Oh I must blog about that", and then letting it go by and regretting doing so.

So many things to do, aren't there? Not just cleaning the oven. I have a lifetime of being a non-macaroon eater to make up for, for example, having discovered them in Perigueux last Christmas.
And I was so relieved on New Year's Eve to take my last 'Photo of the Day'.
It seemed such a good idea when Vik mentioned it, to take a picture each day of the year. But one day last January, when I had already taken 2 pictures of Paul's heavily bandaged foot, one in the hospital and one in front of the woodburner, and was reduced to taking a picture of a cauliflower as we were house-bound by his incapacity, I realised its tyranny!
   But a few days later we left on one of our Pyrennean jaunts to meet Jan and Bob so there were pictures of snow and glasses raised in jolly tapas bars.

After that was another routine period, pics of sunsets and plants emerging and of bits of the house cleaned up for once for another house viewing, until a wealth of photos in April. The mason who built up the barn had described his bi-annual drive to see his mum in Morocco. He'd convinced us how easy it was to do, and that we'd love it. Well we baulked at driving there and back, so I found a ferry that left from Barcelona (just 6 hours drive from us) for Tangier and off we went. It was a wonderful trip, through the Rif Mountains, down to fabulous Fès, through the Middle and High Atlas to the Sahara, up the dramatic Dades Gorge, and eventually back over the High Atlas to mad Marrakech. Sometimes frightening, often challenging but always amazing, we did everything we could as we thought we'd go only once. Now we can't wait to go back. (Some of you have seen some of the photos on Faceache.)

Then it was back to keeping the place up to spec for more pointless house viewings, until we had a houseful for the ol' Ruby Wedding. I remember Paul's parents' Ruby Wedding, thinking how I could not imagine that far in the future, that we should be that old! And there we all were, children with partners, grandchildren, friends, in such summer heat so we were virtually living outside around the big table in the summer kitchen, and the 'pool'. Others told us we should have gone to Venice on a fancy train, to New York, to Macchu Pichu. Well they are still on my bucket list but we'd spent our Silver in a tent in France and don't seem to be able to plan big trips. It is such a delight being able to decide to go to Switzerland, to the so-near Pyrenees, to the Italian Lakes and just go, and driving through France to do those things is so hassle-free. I am not sure we will cope with British traffic.

Another gap with pictures of vegetables followed, until we thought we'd sold the house in September and it fell through the night before the signing at the Notaire, so we were so 'pushed' off we decided to do the trip to Sicily we'd been thinking about. But the ferries had stopped and the drive there and back would be nearly 4 000k so, on the spur, and following hearing Stevie Nicks on Woman's Hour, I bought tickets for Fleetwood Mac and for the TGV and we were off to Paris. P had never been before and I have to say, for a city-hater, he displayed pleasing enthusiasm. We stayed in St Germain, walked miles and had just the best time.

Winding down now. The last photos were mainly in the UK, pre floods and then we were back for Christmas with friends here, having expected, this time last year, to be back there. We did miss the Christmas of last year, when the family, from 2 years to 82, hired a mini bus and all filled this house so it looked and sounded and felt like it should. House, empty and uninhabited but for our part, is off the market now, until the roof is repaired, (soon, so I should have some more blogs about merry artisans, just like 9 years ago). Blogger seems to change every time I 'go on' but I will try to post some of the photos and now go and clean the oven. Perhaps.

Spotting the Sun

Dark bare fig branches criss-cross the oblong windows that lie at floor level in our sitting room. I can look directly at the Tits feeding on the fat balls hanging from them, frenzied now as they sense the day closing, a day when the temperature has not risen above 0.5. They flurry round, trying to make their own weight in food as dry snow scumbles and eddies around them, and settles on the chaffinches and sparrows gleaning below. Brrr. As J has just emailed, it's a day to slouch on the sofa in front of the fire, Rugby on tv, papers scattered about, something nice in the oven, mmmm.

Just three days ago we were sitting in the sun on the patio up at Chater's sipping the first Rosé of the year, aching pleasantly after a morning's work in the vines.
It's pulling out time. All around us people are doing the same. One person, expert with the electric secateurs and pruning techniques, different for different varieties, moves from one ancient gnarled stump to the next, snipping snipping at all last year's amazing quantity of growth, leaving just one or two stems to bear next year's produce. Behind them is left a forest of dead growth, entwined on the wires with tendrils and the ties we put in last April, a dense tangle of tough growth which must all be pulled out and heaped behind in the middle of alternate rows.

I reach up. Snip, snip, freed from the top wire. Snip this bit, it's thickly knitted to another stem and I'll never get them both out. Snip this bit, it's so long it has grown through to the next vine's growth. Right, down below the wires, grab, pull, it gives a little but is caught somewhere, ah, another tendril, so tough those tendrils, snip, pull, out it comes and the lifting wire pings and bounces back into place. My neighbour yelps as it's pinged him on his nose, 'sorreee' we often carol. Reach, snip, bend, pull, drop behind, move on. The nasty wind dropped, the sun came out. Overhead a spotter plane droned, the sound of the growing season in the vineyards. They are checking the number of workers they count with the employment sheets that Jacky has to submit every week. They are probably blinded by the sun flashing from so many grey and silver heads. 'Blimey', they must say, 'aren't those old geezers past retirement? Had we better check that their pensions are taxed for these extra earnings?' Snip, snip, bend, pull, chuck behind until the welcome sight of Jacky, having finished pruning for the day, makes her way up to the house to put lunch on.
We all work together to finish the last row for the day and look back at the 25 rows we have done. Dry, twisted black stumps stick up, freed of dead twigs, with just one or two twigs sticking out. Surely they are all, also, dead? How are they going to each produce incredibly lush growth that will need cutting back at least twice in the coming months and grow several bunches of lush fat grapes, enough for a bottle per vine? An annual miracle. Last year we had all found several vines with an alarming fungus and feared Chaters were going to lose quite a few. But a Nexpert has told Jacky not to worry, it's Black Dead Arm, curable.

I say I feel that's what I have, a dead arm, is it black? and we stroll up to the house to join her. Snippers in this box, black ties to tie up any new vines in this box, white ties to signal a plant that's missed pruning or a loose wire in this box, wellies off, waistcoat off, phew, and someone is pouring the first Rosé of the year.

The tax form comes in May. Something to declare, - several days during the year spent in good company, learning about the fascinating life of the vine, then sitting, pleasantly tired on a sheltered sunny patio, with a glass of something very good indeed. Then a lovely lunch all together, and as we wander homeward, Jacky rummages in the store for a couple of bottles of this or that for us to take home.

Horse Feathers.

A few weeks ago, Mr G (Headmaster, Rtd) and I had a brief correspondence about butchers, and I said I might say  a few words about them in my next Blog.
Well, how topical!
In reply to a woman interviewed for the BBC in Todmorden Market yesterday, who said that the French "eat horse all the time" , - Horsefeathers. I haven't come across a Boucherie Chevalline for years. And thinking about it, the only outlet I knew of, a food counter in Leclec in Marmande labelled Cheval, has not been there for at least the last 5 years. So if 'The French' are eating it all the time, they must be hunting for their supplies.

Hunt they certainly do. I'm going out for a walk in a mo' but wouldn't be if it were the weekend. Through any of the woods you encounter men in High-vis jackets, shotguns crooked over arms, warning you not to go in a particular direction. Their prey are rabbits, pigeons, boar and venison. The husband of a woman I used to walk with once brought us a deer hindquarter - we never managed to finish it - and wasted a lean, healthy and organic source of tasty protein. The Chasseur's Repas in early May will be a feast of boar paté and sausage, venison steak, all washed down with local Duras wines and the eau de vie which is a local by-product.
 Neighbour Réné was out hunting with his lovely brindled dog yesterday, questing for the trail of rabbits across the bare field that was full of sunflowers 7 months ago; added to the vegetables he grows and the chickens he keeps it will reduce his food bills considerably. Although I do meet his wife Denise in the little stupormarket in Duras once in a blue moon as she dashes in between her Home-Carer visits.

I must confess that most of our meat comes from local supermarkets. I did try two excellent butchers who were helpful, and even willing to supply a joint of pork with the skin on and scored, but cuts are so different that it just became easier to examine what was packed ready in the supermarket. Each store of any size has its own butchery. You can see the hanging carcasses behind the counter, and there are notices that show where all the meat originates. Nearly always, the source is local. The aisle of ready meals has, sadly, increased over our 9 years here, but we are not tempted by the brightly coloured cardboard boxes when there is so much lovely duck, local fermier's chicken, good pork and local gamey lamb and mutton to try. (Beef, forget it, stringy cuts and poorly hung.)

But sometimes we would be grovellingly grateful for a proper butcher's banger.... < sigh >