Respite

 We wake to a July day from twenty years ago.

The sunrise is golden, the sky blue with fluffy clouds and I work in the cottage with the windows open and a gentle breeze. Although I have given up the gite, we still welcome friends and one is arriving next Monday (despite our suggestions to cancel).  The temperature remains comfortably in the mid-twenties and the only smell is a faint one from the neighbouring field which is being sprayed with pig muck, much to Rona's delight.

This has been a day to treasure and a brief respite from yet another heatwave and the tragedy of the wildfires encroaching on Bordeaux. Over 100 kilometres away, we have felt their presence, as we have watched the hills on the other side of our valley disappear behind a curtain of brown smoke haze. The acrid smell of wood smoke carried ahead of a distant storm has us racing to close windows and doors optimistically left open in a vain attempt to cool the house.

I walk Rona late evening along the canal towpath in the hope that the smoke is held back by the water and the overhanging plane trees. And we watch the sun slip below the horizon, a single red disc through the murk.

Local communes cancel their summer events, afraid of the impact of the smoke on their vulnerable communards and the risk of fire from the casually thrown cigarette butt. Barbeques and fireworks are banned. The land is like a tinderbox from nearly three months with no rain. Our garden has never looked so sad and parched. I save water for the pot plants and one or two precious trees. The rest must cope as best they can. Late autumn, I will take stock and think again about what will survive in this rapidly changing climate.

Our minor discomforts are trivial, compared with what those in the Gironde are going through. And as for the firemen, what they are coping with is unbelievable. 

We pray for rain and a change of wind direction and a world that finally wakes to what truly matters.

Yet again ...

 ... the months have slipped by and I have not posted. And yet I miss putting down these words.

Too much to write, too busy to write it. Important not to forget it (unfortunately an all too real situation these days).  So to summarise:

We have bought the little house in Chichester.

I've been back and forwards furnishing it - finding stuff I like in the John Lewis which is only 10 minutes (going on 30 minutes) drive away, along the A27, and then buying the nearest equivalent in B&Q, or Dunelm, or Argos, or Ikea.  I'm somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of places to shop, much of it (except for JL and Ikea) looking like a run-down Woolworths from the 60s, but at the same time worth exploring for the occasional treasure. Every trip I have finished exhausted and all shopped out.

One return trip, I flew into Bordeaux late evening and drove the A62 to find I could not get home - the Garonne had flooded and I was cut off. I spent the night in a hotel, initially refused by a grumpy, tired manager who said they were shut and "how did I get in?". She relented. The next morning I headed back towards Bordeaux and at La Reole joined the old Bordeaux Road (built on an embankment above the floodplain - they knew what they were doing in those days).  The journey was surreal, as I drove alongside a "sea" that lapped only feet from my tyre wheels and stretched as far as the eye could see. At one point a train passed me, heading towards Bordeaux, seemingly in the middle of the water, but like me, on an embankment.

We (Tod, Rona and I) made the last trip together, Saint Malo to Portsmouth overnight on a boat called the Saint-Malo, which allowed us to have Rona with us in a miniscule cabin, where we all tripped over each other but coped - helped in my and Rona's case with travel sickness pills and (for me) a good night after taking a sleeping pill - if Rona and Tod snored I didn't hear them.

That trip had its "moments". I forgot the plastic folder with the boat tickets and all the paperwork for the hotels where we planning to stay driving up and back through France. We couldn't risk not having it, so headed back home and added two unnecessary hours to the journey. We then at the hotel the first night found we'd forgotten Tod's luggage. By this stage, tired and emotional and firmly convinced we were senile, we talked of going home. A night's sleep restored us and we pressed on and it was good we did.

We learn about Chichester and how well it suits us, especially that the canal is only five minutes walk away and the tow path is ideal for morning and evening strolls with Rona.  She is much admired on our trips into the city centre and she, in turn, is revelling in being surrounded by other dogs, many small and very well behaved (she's learning).

Our trips to Marks and Spencer food hall and Waitrose delight - we cannot believe how much choice there is and how inventive the selections are - sadly our local Leclerc here in France pales in comparison - Spanish, slightly tired broccoli heads are no match for the delights of fresh purple sprouting!

Then, we come back here and revel in the tranquillity, the lush greenness of our valley and the endless views of fields and woodlands and find that the nightingales, Golden Orioles, hoopoes, cuckoos and redstarts have arrived for the summer and the choices we are having to make feel tough.

Enough procrastinating!  There's a garage to be cleared, lawns to be mowed, a study to be made back into a bedroom, as we get ready to put our life here on the market.  We are lucky to have found a lovely life in Chichester, but leaving this will not be easy.