A Poo in the Park

 Rona is the fussiest dog we have ever had.

Most of our other dogs have marched along the veranda, down the steps and onto the lawn and squatted for a quick pee; into the car, out the other end, and squatted for a quick poo.

This one?  Heavens no! We can walk for 20, 30 minutes before the first pee of the day. And as for a poo!

For a while we seemed to have it sussed. On the home stretch from having walked round the fields, we let her off the lead in the clover. She'd dive off to the brow of the hill and discretely squat - as the clover grew, vanishing completely - and then come bounding and rushing back down to let us know and into the house for breakfast.

That was until the neighbouring farmer sprayed pig shit over his field plus the day she saw a deer. Suddenly, the most important thing in the world became hunting for the deer and eating the pig shit, only returning after an hour or so, panting violently, smelling rank and believing that she should clean her chops all over the furniture.

So, she is now kept on the lead all the way round, with no more squatting in the clover and (unfortunately) the risk of an "accident" on the lounge carpet later in the day when her digestion finally catches up with her.

And so, she gets a second walk. Far from ideal with daytime temperatures in the 30s. And certainly not round our open fields. Hence the park - old enough to have grand cypresses and well-established oaks offering us ample shade and (finally), in her hunt for doggy smells, she remembers why she's there.

These recent days the park entrances have been blocked by large agricultural containers - too heavy to be moved with anything less than a tractor - in an attempt to keep out a convoy of travellers' caravans that arrives overnight most summers and stays for weeks. 

The containers also keep out the lunchtime workers, seeking shade for their cars while they munch through their sandwiches and baguettes and stare at their phones; not to mention the elderly locals who do no more than open the boot, let the dog out and then doze in the driver's seat.

To our surprise, most days now, we seem to have the place to ourselves. 

This Thursday, though, all will change and the containers will go. In one green corner is a small chapel, dedicated to vintage vehicles and on August 15th each year the whole park is filled to the brim with elderly cars and lorries and tractors and their enthusiasts, there to be blessed by the local priest and then off for a parade around town. 

Like Toad in Wind in the Willows, it will all be more "poop poop" than poo poo.

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.

 

The aforementioned folder ...

 ... (see previous post) is too small.

Have I mentioned already? Probably not.  We are attempting to buy a small terraced house in Chichester.  

We've spent much of the last eighteen months pondering our future (nothing like a couple of major ops to force one to face one's mortality).

Much as we love France and especially the bit where we live, we have come to recognise whoever of us is left will up sticks and return to the UK.  We have no family to take on the role of executor and it would be cruel to ask anyone else to sort out our affairs in France.  So, we are planning for it now and hopefully making things easier for the last of us. Part of the plan is to have a property in the UK already that either of us would be happy to move into whilst things are tidied up in France.

We've found somewhere and are going through the agony of trying to purchase it.  We realised the last time we bought a property in the UK was 28 years ago. It is now another world, not helped by the fact that we are treated as money launderers, everything is now done on smart phones and the paperwork arriving from the solicitors by email is so voluminous that, this morning, I have had to buy a larger folder (see above), an additional ream of paper and a new set of inks. 

We grit our teeth and hang on in there because we love the house we've found and are enchanted by Chichester.

We talk about it becoming our "maison secondaire" for a time and popping across to stay for a week or two, while our base continues (for the time being) to be France.  We are too embedded in the French system and all its healthcare benefits to want to lose that quite yet.

The house is bright, modern, feels spacious within its smallness, with a small garden. Chichester has a John Lewis and I look forward to shopping for modern, Scandi-style furniture. It could not be more different from where we live in France.

This will be a new adventure.

 

A One Hedgehog Evening

 Rona has been "done". And to my surprise she is returned to me with no cone or bandage round her belly to stop her licking herself. And to our even greater surprise, she takes little or no notice of her operation scar. I do dig out the fancy Elizabethan collar she wore after her elbows were operated on, just in case. The vet today checked her over and proclaimed her "nickel" but did warn she might lick more as the scar scabs over - so for the moment the cone remains on the side.

We have instructions to keep her exercising subdued and controlled, until next week.  So she remains on the lead. Tod does the early morning walk - down to the stream, along, up and round, usually across Monsieur F's clover field which is still planted and flowering and makes for an easy route back home (not too wet or muddy).

Armed with a head torch, I do evenings after supper, before the latest Netflix series. She and I head off round our field and garden, saying good evening to the hedgehogs as we go. She is good with them - just a sniff and a nuzzle - and then off.  They barely react and certainly don't feel the need to roll into a ball. Unlike the days of Clara, who used to run round the garden with a rolled up hedgehog in her mouth and then drip blood on the kitchen floor as I extracted the spines from her lips.

I think we have at least four, though we've never seen more than three in any given evening - they seem to keep to their own patch: the cottage lawn, the field, the house lawn and the bank alongside the track.

We only saw one tonight, as I "encouraged" Rona into the house. We're staying in the cottage while work is done on our utility room in the house.  I got tired of the mouse-ridden, colombage-dusty open shelves. What seemed enchanting when we moved in, these days is just grubby.  So the walls are now white, plasterboarded and rendered, the ceiling insulated, and the floor about to be tiled. (The "terre cuite" squares we bought for the kitchen18 years ago are totally passé - everything now is grey and beige giant rectangles.)  I find a series of multi-coloured tiles with an echo of the russet in the kitchen and hope that they blend in.  Tomorrow a trip to Bordeaux for a final check up of Tod's second cataract op (all progressing well) affords an opportunity to head to Ikea for suitable (narrow) kitchen shelving, and a Swedish meatballs lunch.

Rona and I thread our way through the kitchen, filled to the gunnels with the contents of the utility room, including a fridge, washing machine and tumble dryer. Not sure how our builders managed to squeeze the appliances through the utility room doorway and past the kitchen dresser.

My objective is to find a folder and a hole punch in my study and take them back down to the cottage. I need to do some filing before the accumulated paperwork disappears into the Bermuda triangle between the cottage and the house.  How do people who split their time between the UK and France manage?  We can't even keep things in order across two lawns!

The lights in the cottage throw out a warm, welcoming glow. As we head back down, I briefly turn out the torch and look up at the myriad stars in the clear black sky - it's going to be a cold night - two degrees by eight tomorrow morning. I hope our hedgehogs find shelter.

I hear a sound ...

 ... of crackling plastic from the kitchen that needs investigating.  As I arrive, I see a tail disappearing out the door into the garden.

I grab a bag of treats and follow.  Sure enough, as I feared, Rona has snatched an open packet of cheese slices. I thought I had pushed them to the back of the worktop but she is getting to the size where, on her hind legs, most things are in reach.

I worry what a whole pack of cheese will do to her digestion.  I needn't have. The cheese slices, still in a single block, have slid out of their pack and are lying on the lawn. I pick them up and dust them down - only a few bits of earth and grass. They'll be fine.

Rona in the meantime, is lying on the far side of the garden contentedly chewing the hard plastic packet and threatens to run off with it as I approach.

I use the magic phrase "Rona, treat".  All thought of cheesy plastic immediately forgotten, she is at my side in a flash, sitting dutifully. 

Treat given, pack retrieved (just about usable), cheese and pack returned to the fridge and order restored.

At Last!

 After two and a half months the weather has finally broken and we have had rain.  Not for long, but anything is better than nothing. "Aquitaine" it is not!

A small storm is rumbling around. It can't make up its mind whether to move up into Dordogne or along the Lot.  Rain ran before it, enough to give us, briefly, the rich, peaty smell of damp earth through the open kitchen door.

For weeks we have fretted that this will be the new norm - temperatures in the thirties, guests who do little except lie by the pool, even the ones who in previous years planned their days out.  We hide in the house, grateful for its thick stone walls and high ceilings and close everything down - curtains and shutters - as the unforgiving sun moves round.  

The garden is already autumnal - trees rapidly shedding their brown brittle leaves. The fallen figs are dried out on the ground and the lawns have become bare earth covered in dying weeds. What grass there is has not grown in weeks and is the colour of straw.

I cruelly leave the borders unwatered, asking the roses, geraniums, oleander and hibiscus to cope as best they can.  What survives will become the preferred new plantings for future years.

The guests help to keep the pots alive round the cottage - throwing on washing-up water and buckets from their showers.  I water the tomatoes, but not enough, or too erratically, and the large coeur de boeuf develop blossom end rot.

Until these last few days we have left the pool uncovered to try to keep its temperature below that of warm soup.

For ten days now, the forecasts have been promising the rain, but each day we've watched the small drawings of  grey clouds disappear from the charts. We gave up believing it would happen.  

So, finally, we send up a prayer of thanks to the rain gods and (apologising to those who are on still on holiday) hope that over the coming days we will have more - much more. 

What to Tell?

 An email pops into my inbox from someone who used to holiday here as a child in the seventies.  Her offer of photos from that time sets me off on a nostalgic trip through my blogs from the early days when we restored and renovated the cottage and the house.

Those blogs hold my memories. Things about our life here that I have forgotten and I am grateful for the reminders. And that brings me back to right now and how I have left these recent weeks unrecorded - but what to tell and how?

Early in the year a colonoscopy confirmed what I had suspected - I had colon cancer.  That set me off on a journey of discovery as to how best to deal with it.  The cancer itself has never held fears for me. It is merely part of myself, my cells, reacting to some stimulus: food? stress? anger? environment? who knows?  

My greater concern has been my treatment and what that might entail. As a friend said: "I went into hospital a well man and came out sick".

Not least, my journey led me to discover just how many of my friends and acquaintances have been through the same experience, some many years ago.  It's not one of the cancers we talk about - mild embarrassment about that part of our bodies maybe - yet it's one of the most treatable, if caught early and so merits being discussed.

I'm hoping mine has been caught early.  A scan, pre-op, showed nothing suspicious anywhere else.

So a discussion with my surgeon reassures. He will be doing keyhole surgery, using a robot (said with a touch of pride). The cancer and a portion of my colon will be removed (there is spare) and the remainder will be reattached.  And thus it proved to be.

The hardest part was awaking in the intensive care unit, to too much noise, wires everywhere so I could barely move and constant flashing lights. The four days and nights were interminable, made bearable by the kindest of staff (except when I wanted to stay in bed and burst into tears - "no she must get up, to get things moving again" - they were right of course).  

Two of the nurses asked how old I was - 78 - and I immediately turned into my mother (who used to ask people to guess her age in her 80s) as I lapped up the flattery - "no you can't be"  "how young you look" And (of course) I immediately felt better.

They finally took pity on me and sent me to general nursing where I found tranquillity, a good night's sleep, and a private bathroom where I managed to shower myself and feel half human again. And then I got cramp in my left calf.  And yes, as I feared, a deep vein thrombosis, and the prospect of being kept in. But it's small and I'm back on full dose blood thinners and wearing an elegant (not) compression stocking. So I came home.

But that is only half the story.  We should have said no and waited 'til the autumn, for Tod's sake, given all he was coping with. 

In the weeks before my op, Rona began to limp on her left leg. We took her to the excellent vet who did Bertie's cruciate ligament.  X-rays showed she has a puppy disease - elbow dysplasia - he kept her in, operated on both elbows there and then, removing damaged bone and we were given instructions she needed "repos strict" for 10 weeks. Short walks in the garden, on the lead, to do her business and then back indoors, restricted to one room (the kitchen).  

This, imposed on a teenage Airedale whose greatest joy is haring across our field playing hide and seek and standing on her hind legs to investigate what we are preparing for supper on the kitchen worktop. All this while I'm in hospital and Tod is wanting to visit, an hour's drive away.  His life not helped by Rona's reluctance to do anything whilst on the lead.

I came home to find the modus vivendi was an open kitchen door and Rona able to come and go at will in the garden (no lead) and she is now limping on her right leg.  I try and impose the strict regime on them both, but too late.

And I have sympathy with Rona's belief she is better. I too feel the same. But tiny keyhole scars are misleading as to the healing that needs to take place inside.

Both of us are going back to see our respective surgeons in a couple of weeks.  I hope they are not too cross with us.

And in the meantime, our latest gite guests have arrived, who think Rona is adorable. 

 

She's a "holy terror" ...

... as my mother would say.

"Viliane" has become "Rona" (short for Verona).  Pedigree dogs born in the same year all have the same initial for their name - being an indication of the year they were born.  So pedigree dogs born in 2024, all have names begin with "V".  Viliane is hard to remember and starting "Vi" almost always morphs into Vita. She needs her own name. So Rona she is, and we remember most of the time

She came to us at 9 months and now she's 10.  She is a handful and still very much a puppy.  Friends ask why was she 9 months and still at the breeders. We don't know, but can well imagine more than one set of prospective owners brought her back!

Her preferred stance is front paws on our chest so she can converse more easily with us. On the ground is too far away. And if front paws are not on us, then on the kitchen worktop, so she can see what we are preparing for supper.

Plastic is irresistible, making a satisfying cracking noise between her teeth. The clasps on one of Tod's sandals have been chewed - fortunately he has another pair.  Hose connectors are a fair target, as are the plastic containers for young plants (which are scattered round the lawn while she runs off with the tray). More alarmingly, she likes plastic wiring (my phone charger lead is no more). She's taken a fancy to the telephone wire on the ground that goes down to the cottage (not good for internet connection) and we fear she may go for electric cables - we are hastily "puppy proofing" how we live.

She has found her voice, which is a banshee wail (no doubt much to the horror of distant neighbours). Often, we have no idea what she is yelling at - bird song, dogs barking on the TV, to let us know it's morning, to warn us we might have visitors (not that we have many - her bark/howl is enough to deter anyone - she could audition for the hound of the Baskervilles).

We're hoping that her tendency to wee in the dining room is gradually being resolved - by a crack of dawn walk with Tod before any "accidents" can happen. Having lived outside at the breeders she's never been house trained and the tiles in the dining room look much like the tiles on the terrace where she lived. 

She also comes when called (even when in the middle of "greeting" Jehovah's Witnesses), knows "sit" and "down" and (unlike Vita and Bertie) actually does it. Our field with its long grasses is a joy, into which she bounds, disappears and then re-emerges with a grin on her face, zooms past us and disappears again - Airedale version of hide and seek.

She rolls on her back in the long grass by the entrance post and then slides and summersaults backwards into the ditch alongside. It looks alarming but she climbs back out and comes racing across the drive to tell us "what fun".

She is adorable and she makes us laugh. We are so lucky we found her.

A house is too quiet ...

 ... without a dog.

We were not going to have another one - we are too old, we want to go travelling and it's complicated with a dog.  That idea lasted a month.

Tod was lying in bed with flu. I was sitting in the lounge alone watching late night TV, imagining this is how my final years would be. We both needed joy back in our lives.

So, last weekend we set off 600kms, beyond Aix-en-Provence, to bring home Viliane, a nine month old Airedale teenager.  She is adorable.

The Best of Dogs

We said goodbye to Bertie Thursday afternoon.  He went easily and happily, off on his next big adventure. 

I am bereft.

A Small Triumph

We live surrounded by farmland.  We follow the seasons of ploughing, harrowing, planting, watering, harvesting. We talk to Monsieur F about what crop he's growing this coming year and learn how French agriculture slowly, slowly is changing, adapting, expanding.  What used to be the monotony of maize, rape and winter wheat now also embraces sunflowers, beetroot (for the seeds) and new this winter "trèfle" which we suspect is a type of clover.  He tells us the field will be a mass of purple flowers in June, and (we hope) a mass of contented bees.

His land envelopes us and stretches across two fields to a boundary with what used to be the terrain of a chateau, sadly dismantled to make way for a cluster of sheds and buildings holding pigs.

Between the two fields is a narrow country lane that ascends steeply from the bridge over the stream at the bottom of the valley to the road along the brow of the hill up behind us.  Rarely used, we did not even know the lane was there until after we had bought our house. Standing in the garden and looking across what we thought was a continuous field of maize we were somewhat startled to see the roof of a car heading up through the middle.

This lane is even quieter these days, used only by the most hardy. The potholes are deep and frequent and require skilful manoeuvring up onto the verges. But for us it is a useful shortcut on the way to Agen.

It also is part of our morning walk with Bertie: down through our field to the stream, along the bottom of Monsieur F's field, said stream beside us, today bubbling and gurgling from all of Sunday morning's rain, to the small bridge, missing part of one side (never repaired) which the pig farmer's young daughter managed to clip with the huge tractor she was driving during Covid, then turn back up the steep country lane to the road at the top, along the road to the bungalow with all the dogs, who greet us enthusiastically and with not a little envy as they are never let out.  With the dogs, who quickly lose interest, behind us we head back down "our" farm track to our house below.  All the changing contours make a good morning workout for all of us.

Sometime towards the end of last year I suddenly found I could not walk up the steep pot-holed country lane without stopping to get my breath back. I thought it was my pacemaker malfunctioning, or maybe just needing retuning, so made an appointment with my cardiologist (there's a phrase I never expected to have in my life).  Appointments take time and so for several weeks I continued to puff my way up the hill, sometimes having to stop twice to recover.

In preparation for the cardiologist's appointment I take a blood test and all is revealed - not my pacemaker after all, but severe anaemia.  The GP's surgery swings into action and, with much tutting and fussing, I have a blood transfusion within a couple of days.  I feel better, but continue to puff going up the hill.  Another blood test (the French are thorough) reveals the anaemia is better but not by much.  So an "iron infusion" is arranged.  The authoritarian office manager looks up from her desk and gives me a reassuring smile (a rare occurrence) telling me I will feel "much better" after it.  Google tells me it will take two weeks. 

This morning, it's ten days since I had the iron and for the first time in many weeks I walk up the hill without stopping. It is a small and very satisfying triumph.  

I think I'll be alright ...

 ... if I just sit at my computer for the next two weeks watching Graham Norton videos.

If I move, if I talk, or if I laugh, I cough.  Maybe Graham isn't such a good idea, after all.

A friend told me it takes a month to get over this cough - that's what his pharmacist said.  And there is a fierce poster in our doctor's surgery telling us that antibiotics do not get rid of bronchitis.  So I rely on hot lemon, ginger and honey (some recommend whisky as well) and lashings of Vicks on my chest at night and try not to sound like I'm smoking 50 a day.

We're into week three. So hopefully not much longer.

This could not have come at a worse time - but then when did a cold or flu come at a good time?

Knowing we would be into a round of doctors' appointments and check-ups, I thought how nice to take a week away and return refreshed, relaxed and fortified.  So off we set to see friends in Trujillo in the middle of nowhere, in Spain.  We set forth in the car, unfortunately already a moving petri dish, Bertie in the back and Tod keeping quiet about his newly started sore throat.   As a result, our trip was subdued and we feared for infecting our friends and refused their welcoming supper, much to our mutual disappointment. 

We have smugly avoided all the germs going round since Covid - we have friends who regularly get vaccinated and still have managed to get the lurgy four times - "ah, but we haven't had it badly", they crow.  "We haven't had it at all, or flu, or a cold" we congratulate ourselves.

So now, we've both have had the cold to end all colds and a cough that refuses to go. 

It's strange. I sit in our doctor's waiting room, being good and wearing a mask, for the sake of him and his other patients and I don't cough at all.  I can watch an hour of Rogue Heroes and not cough at all.  I can watch YouTube videos and not cough at all - except when I laugh at Graham Norton's guests.

We promise we will go back to see our friends when all of this is over.  Their front door opens to a cosy cavern of a kitchen, stone walls, no windows, filled with shelves of gleaming pans, pots and jars of intriguing foodstuffs and glittering fairy lights and ornaments.  Cool in the ferocious Spanish summer, and warm in a chilly winter, it will be a place of welcome, comfort and healing.

Towpath Walks

 We are spoilt with our waterways. Three are all within ten to fifteen minutes drive, each with their own character - The Garonne, The Lot and The Lateral Canal.  At this time of the year the last is our favourite.

The great plane trees alongside the towpath have lost their leaves and the boughs that lean down to the water form a cathedral nave over our heads.  On crisp, sunny afternoons the light streams through the bare branches.  These are the days when we pop Bertie in the back of the car and ask: which way today? The walk beyond the gem museum? The one from the camping car "aire", where we are bound to meet and greet small fluffy things who want to play? Or the one that goes in a circle, over the first bridge, along the grass verge to the lock keeper's cottage, back over the second bridge, returning along the towpath to the car?

More than sixteen months ago we decided we needed to simplify our lives - each of us having had major health events.  However, as John Lennon said "life happens when you are making other plans" and this year has slipped beyond our control.  Now, finally, we are beginning to look hard at what our future might be. 

These days of sun and walking and talking, pausing every so often to let Bertie catch up, have been our salvation.

The towpaths are a place for our dreams.  

Bertie watches me from the corner ...

 ... of the building we call "the abri" - the semi-derelict long shed that once was the milking parlour for Serge's cows and now, one day, maybe a proper, tidy storage area for summer furniture and gardening tools as opposed to the mess it is at the moment.

He is looking at me with a mix of anxiety and grumpiness. He thinks it's long past suppertime.  The clocks going back an hour a few weeks ago still cause him problems when he sees no evidence of his food being prepared.

I'm trying to cut the overlong damp grass that in summer is the neat green sward where our gite guests park their cars. The battery Stihl just about manages, provided I keep it on its highest cut and stop at the end of every row to pull out the wet clumps that are clinging to the blades.

By the time I've had enough (I find a hose half hidden in the grass and can't be bothered to clear it out the way and go on mowing. I'll do it tomorrow) Bertie has grown bored with trying to will me into feeding him and has headed back up towards the house to see if Tod is a softer target.

More in hope than expectation, we mow late, as the evenings draw in, giving the cold autumn sun and brisk wind a chance to take off the worst of the damp and make our task easier.  I hear Tod in the field trying to rev up the sit-on motor to encourage it forwards and stop it sliding back down the bank.

Afternoons have become a routine, before we mow.  We stroll along the canal towpath making the most of the weak sunlight, Bertie happily dawdling behind us, investigating new smells, until he suddenly realises we are too far ahead, and races to catch up, ears and tail flapping.  

These days we tend to wait for him. We are not sure how much he can see or hear and suspect it is not a lot.  He has been known to attach himself to a family walking in the other direction, much to their bemusement, and calling him has no effect. The situation requires a quick dash along the side of the canal in the hope that the newly adopted family with our dog at their feet has the sense to stop and wait for me.

His world has probably become vague shadows that he recognises. Familiar walks are the safest, food at the right time and beds and blankets in every corner.  Tissues and socks left within reach are chewed and swallowed (much to my horror) and I try to "Bertie-proof" the house - bins out of reach, and bathroom doors shut - toilet tissue is irresistible. I do not always succeed. I hear the sound of a piece of cutlery falling in the kitchen and find him with an egg box and three eggs smashed on the floor which he is licking up with gusto. Somehow over the last few years he has morphed into Vita - he who had little or no interest in food if it wasn't small, furry and still alive. These days he is constantly hungry and I wonder if all the tablets we are giving him are making him that way: tablets for wonky heart, declining kidneys, doubtful liver and achy joints.

Our vet reassures: "it is not the end, but it is the beginning of the end."  For now, he snores gently behind me as I type this, content in the knowledge that we have all had an excellent day and that supper did finally arrive, even if (for him) it was an hour later than it should have been.

"So much of the world ...

 ... is not made by people."

A quote by author Barbara Kingsolver in this morning's Guardian resonates.

Friday I suggest we head for the Chinese buffet rather than cook supper.  It seemed like a good idea - the buffet is generous, varied and you can go back as often as you want. It's too easy to overeat! 

The restaurant is large, low ceilinged and crowded with families celebrating the start of the weekend. I'd forgotten it was Friday evening when I suggested we went.  On the table next to us a girl is coughing - badly.  Covid is still with us and I try to face the other way, avoiding her late teenage germs. 

The background noise of French people enjoying a meal is thunderous.  We are no longer used to urban living. 

We eat too much, regret it and escape, heading back to our world where "so much is not made by people". Our woods, valleys and fields may be shaped by man, but the green that soothes the soul is not of man. 

For much of the time the loudest sound we hear is birdsong.

Midsummer and I am wearing my dressing gown ...

 ... over my jeans and sweater and drinking hot chocolate to try to keep warm.  

I've just taken an electric radiator down to our guests in the cottage. The underfloor heating is off (after all it is summer) and it takes too long to warm up when it's switched back on.  They need the warmth right now. The cold and the persistent drizzle means that there is no incentive to go out and so they are huddled on the sofa in the lounge (reluctantly so far as the wife is concerned) watching football on the TV.

Difficult to believe it's supposed to be thirty degrees by Tuesday.

We've been here before. In 2010 we lit the wood fire in the lounge.  It's tempting to do so again this evening.

Yesterday, in Leclerc's their musak was blasting out Winter Wonderland.  Strange to be wandering around in June to the sound of "In the meadow we will build a snowman".  I try to explain this to the girl on the till.  From her expression I'm guessing she thought I was struggling with my French vocabulary.  I'll save this for a discussion point at our next Zoom French lesson.

Maybe the musak company knows something about climate change that the rest of us don't.

I wake at five am ...

 ... to the sound of an animal crying.  

I seize my dressing gown ready to do battle with (I assume) an amorous feral ginger tom on the terrace, switch on the lights and fling open the French windows and hiss loudly.  No cat, but the sound continues and I realise it's Bertie. Afraid he's been badly hurt in a fight, I grab a torch and in the light see a desperate face with wide frightened eyes in the far corner of the swimming pool.  He's scrabbling unsuccessfully to get a purchase with his front paws on the tile surround, his back legs flailing in the water to try and keep afloat. 

I grab him under his armpits, hoik him out and cuddle him in my arms as I race back to the house. He's soaked to the skin, freezing cold and trembling violently. Swimming pool water pours off him over the kitchen floor and he runs to the lounge to try and dry himself against the sofa covers.  I fling on heaters, hunt for large bath towels - mine, clean - throw them over him and rub him and rub him to try and get some heat back into his body.  He has the wisdom not to resist.  I fear for a seizure or heart attack.  

He sits upright in front of the gas fire in the kitchen as I continue to towel him. He's so close I swear I can smell singed fur. Gradually, gradually his fur dries and the trembling abates.  He tucks himself down in "his" corner and sleeps, while I make a hot chocolate drink and read a Lidl's catalogue cover to cover. I don't want to leave him and it's the only reading matter to hand at this hour of the morning.  

He recovers enough to accept breakfast, which I take as a good sign but still feel I need to keep an eye on him - no working in the cottage today.  So I do something I've been meaning to do for years - make the cover for the foam seat for the Lloyd loom chair in one of the bedrooms.  It's always on the list below more important stuff and I always finish up just plumping up a square pink cushion, which looks less than ideal wedged in a half-moon seat.  I get my sewing machine and the material I'd already planned to use and plonk them on the kitchen table and, while he snores gently in the corner, I work and reflect on the fact that it takes me all morning.  In that time the contestants make a full-length evening dress on the Great British Sewing Bee!  

He awakes, drinks, goes back to sleep, wakes again, goes out for a widdle, but nowhere near the lawn that leads to the pool. After lunch I decide to take him into town for a gentle stroll round the park behind the Town Hall. It's where we walked all those evenings when he was convalescing with his knee and I know that we will move at a snail's pace as every clump of grass and tree trunk has to be investigated and marked. He does well, so I decide a detour in the merc to the artisanal patisserie for comfort food is called for. By the time I return he has squeezed himself past the netting that is supposed to keep him in the back and is waiting, front paws up on the glove box, grin on his face, ready for "a treat".

He tells me he thinks he will live.

Leclerc's first aisle is full ...

 ... of flimsy little skimpy things for high summer.

Most people walking past are wearing puffer jackets and scarves and (if they are anything like me) have still got their thermals on underneath.

Bertie comes with me to town.  I hoped to walk him in the park but it starts to rain so we head straight for the new solar panel shelters and I lift out the empty gas bottles that are behind his cage and shove them in the well of the passenger seat.  At least I manage to do that in the dry. 

We wander up to the MacDonald's on the far side of the carpark. Bertie thinks it would be a good idea to go inside, which is tempting, but I steer him away and we explore the garden area they've created for any dropped chips and then head back to the car.

He is good in the new Renault - much more so than he was in the Skoda.  Maybe it's because his cage is hard up against the front seats, so he is really close to us when we are travelling.  Little or no whimpering, except if he needs a comfort break.  I leave him to "guard the car", which he does happily.

I'd resigned myself to not renewing the gas bottles since the full ones are in pens up on the road, a schlep away from the back of the store where the Drive trolleys are wheeled out to waiting customers and where one pays for the gas.  It's cruel to ask the assistants to come out in the pouring rain. They are all young and totally inappropriately dressed for a soaking.

But I'm in luck. The rain eases off and a young man carries my full bottles for me and puts them in the car. They are the plastic, lighter weight version and they warn me of the passing years. Sixteen years ago I could carry the heavy metal ones and now, even the plastic ones feel an effort.  Tod has bought a set of dumbbells as we have read about the importance of retaining muscle strength. I note they are still in their box.  I must encourage the young assistants to let me carry the full gas bottles.  There's no sign that the weather is going to improve over the coming weeks, so it looks like I'll be buying more. 

Also, there'll be no "clout casting" in this household even although May is about to be out, and certainly no buying or wearing of little skimpy summery things for the foreseeable future.

A Blissfully Happy Bertie

 

Under normal circumstances he looks something like this ...