Wednesday Morning

Yesterday morning we went to the funeral of our mayor.

He died suddenly of a heart attack and the commune is still in shock. Several hundred of us stood outside the small church, chatting quietly, waiting patiently for the cortege. Gendarmes arrived in full dress uniform. A flag was unfurled.

So many weather-beaten faces were touched with grief, as the service was piped to those of us outside through wavering, crackly loud speakers.

People spoke of him with affection and remembered his warmth and kindness. He will be missed.

Smudge has tick fever ....

.... and I'm zonked.

Yesterday evening having written a cheerful catching up email to Pat in Mexico, I went for a walk with Smudge. He bounced (as much as his rickety old legs will let him) to the Merc and up the ramp that lets him get into the back, where he likes to sit facing backwards, grumbling at cars that tailgate.

One of the villages where we walk him is five minutes drive away. I parked in our usual place and opened the back. He likes to lean against the wheel arch for support and he just sat there. "Okay", I thought, "he's bored with here. We'll go a bit further, to the next village." Another five minutes or so away.

Again, when I opened the back, he just looked at me. So I tugged on his collar and he reluctantly stood up. It was then that I realised that the sweet sickly smell I had sub-consciously noticed in the car was because he had done his business. "Poor mite" I thought "he's embarrassed and that's why he doesn't want to get up and out of the car". So I tugged him down the ramp, cleaned him and the car as best I could and then watched him just stand there, swaying, tail between his legs, head hanging low. And it was only ten minutes ago that he bounced to the car. "Oh Lord" I thought "he's had a stroke, or something" So tugged him back up the ramp and drove home as quickly as possible, more concerned at what I could see happening in the rear-view mirror than looking ahead - as his head sunk lower and lower.

I left him in the car and sat with him in the drive as I waited for our vet to arrive, still thinking stroke or something as he lay there panting. We knew it was serious when he made no attempt to grumble at her as she examined him and took his temperature (high). Then she turned back his lips and showed me his pale gums - anaemia. And suddenly we were talking tick fever.

When feeding on the blood of its host, an infected tick passes a parasite which lodges in the red blood cells. The host body responds to the invasion by destroying red blood cells. Smudge's lethargy and panting were in response to the rapid onset of anaemia as his cells died and his heart struggled to pump round enough oxygenated blood.

This is life-threatening.

Taking no chances, our vet gave him three injections and I gave him a homeopathic remedy - ledum 1M - to support him. Tod carried him in and tucked him in bed. Our vet drove away in the dark, doing her best to reassure me.

The first twelve hours are the most critical. So we put a mattress in the kitchen and I settled down beside him, listening to his rapid, faint breathing and watching him just lying there in the faint glow of a nightlight. The slightest thing jerked me awake with a cold anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach. The American fridge turning on and off was thunderous. I thought I heard mice. Tod crept in to see how he was. I took the kitchen clock out because I couldn't hear his breathing over the ticking. Once or twice Smudge licked his lips, so using a syringe I trickled water into his mouth - dehydration is a serious risk. He took it without raising his head.

And then suddenly it was ten to seven on the microwave clock and we had come through the night and he was still with us. Our vet said he was tough.

I'm getting an early night tonight. I know I will sleep soundly and so will Smudge.

Sunday in the Park, with Judy and Paul

(with apologies to Mr Sondheim)

The weekend before last was "le weekend de patrimoine" when stuff happens - fairs, open days, walks - all of which are usually an excuse to eat.

Sunday lunchtime, long trestle tables were set up in the park by the mill in the village where we often walk Smudge. A bandstand went up. The stalls around the edge offered food: pâté and tomatoes, cooked chicken, fried whitebait, cheeses, wines, gooey deserts.

We wandered from stall to stall, piling our plates, and contentedly settled at one end of a table.

After lunch, as we lazed, couples danced in the early afternoon sun to rock and roll numbers. With a weekend theme of heritage, the old dance tunes seemed appropriate.


Links:
Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim: 

I have no words ....

... to adequately describe the blue-skied wonder of these early autumn days.

Hot sun on my back as I dig the weeds out of the bank below the lawn - almost too hot.

I stand up, stretch and turn to watch a tractor in a distant field and feel the sharp, fresh cold wind across my hot shoulders - like stepping into a cold shower.

Late Summer Visitor

Scarce Swallowtail, photographed by Tod 14/09/08.





We have raised walled borders along the front of the veranda. In the corner of the right-hand bed beside the steps down onto the lawn, there is a buddleia. It's grown too big and is beginning to break down the wall of the border. Buddleias are lovely when they are first in bloom, but by September the gone-over blossom - more brown seed than mauve flowers - looks ragged and tired. So, of course, it will have to go.

But it's also a magnet for butterflies. What can replace it and bring us visitors like this?

Sand between my Toes

Joy of joys - went to the seaside yesterday!

As the day promised to be fine, we set off in the batmobile, hood down, for Lacanau-Océan, on the far side of Bordeaux: round the rocade, turn left and keep going west until you hit the Atlantic. It's a "proper" seaside town: pink, yellow and blue paint in abundance; rows of small shops selling the French equivalent of "kiss me quick" hats; ice cream in every hue and flavour and every other shop a pavement cafe.

We found a seafood restaurant (paella good, sardines not so) and sat under an awning watching the world go by. In August, the town heaves, but now the pace is more leisurely; mainly the elderly and couples with toddlers have their pick of places to eat.

Afterwards we strolled down to the front. The beach is breath-taking. Look left and as far as the eye can see there is golden sand. Look right, and as far as the eye can see there is golden sand - just a small slice of the 150-odd miles of beach that stretches from the mouth of the Gironde to the foothills of the Pyrenees.

We bought a folding chair for Tod so he could sit and read while I splashed about in the small surf (yesterday was a quiet day), wading out to chest level and then attempting to swim in on the rollers as they broke, puffing and panting back out again with sea in my eyes and ears, feeling about 8 years-old. I splashed my way around the tourists learning to surf and enviously watched the instructors effortlessly catch the waves that took them almost to dry land.

Driving back, (for Tod's entertainment) we detoured across country to join the D2, the road that follows the Gironde estuary and weaves between the Grand Cru vineyards and chateaux. Under cloudless blue skies we turned south towards Margaux and Bordeaux. A journey up to Paulliac and the Chateaux Lafite Rothschild and Latour will have to wait for another day.

We arrived home tired and happy. It was a good day. I sat on the edge of the bed last night and brushed out the sand from between my toes.

Lasting Memories

Stas and Anka came, stayed for a while, then left again, like two exotic birds.

They slept lots (sometimes in the tent); cycled to town in the heat of the sun; helped clean and prepare the house for the party; mowed the lawn; strimmed the brambles; did the washing up; left intriguing photos on my computer; squabbled; made up; worried us; made us laugh; played with Smudge and massaged his back to ease his aches and pains; ate greasy crêpes with nutella at a night market (why do we always fall for them?); played Mexican dominoes and scrabble; hitched to Spain and came back; drew our portraits; went to Biarritz with Tod in the batmobile and got caught in a storm.

ANKA is scratched on the stonework of the cottage.

Photos by Anka

The Cottage

I've been playing with floor planning software for the last few days.

Our plans for the house have not moved forward, so we've turned our attention to our derelict cottage (also know as the guest accommodation) which lies at the bottom of the garden, beyond a mess of brambles where nightingales sing in spring.

The cottage has no roof and at some point there was a fire, so many of the fallen beams are blackened and crumbling. The chimney is still standing but it is bowing out and the adjoining wall has cracks you can get your hand in. (Mind you, there are people living in houses up in the village with cracks bigger than ours - no one seems to worry that much.) But we do have four walls and the chimney still has the TV aerial on top.

Our first task has been to get a "certificat d'urbanisme" which gives us the right to restore the cottage. Without that, it has to stay a ruin. A delicate conversation with the local mayor along the lines of "would we possibly be thinking of using the cottage as a chambre d'hôte" and "well, we would not rule out that possibility" may well have helped the process. This is a region where there is little accommodation for tourists .

So now we are on to the next stage of getting planning permission to do the building work - especially putting the roof back before winter rains penetrate further into the walls. The cottage is not large - it will be less than 150 square meters over its two floors - and therefore the plans do not have to be drawn up by an architect. Hence the planning software.

Clutching tape-measure, pad and pencil, we crunch our way across the debris of bricks, tiles and wood that litters the earth floors and gingerly ease ourselves under half-supported beams. We peer into small rooms where young saplings are growing through broken pallets. I wait while Tod gets a ladder and in the stillness I can hear the sound of wasps gnawing on rotten wood. This is hard hat territory.

Thin wires trail everywhere and catch our feet. They were strung from the long-gone ceilings and used for drying tobacco. Broken light switches hang off walls and I nervously eye the meter still there in the hall. The power is off - I hope. There is no running water or sanitation, but a thin electricity wire stretches down from the pole by our house. This is the wire that the swallows are gathering on this week. They'll soon be gone. We measure pitted window cavities and doorways and try to decide what are the "right" lengths to put on the plan as the gaps vary by centimetres.

We begin to notice things: a doorway has been narrowed; an added window is bigger than the others; here was the hole where the water from the sink came through; the step into the hayloft is worn down by years of use; the angle of the missing roof can still be seen on the chimney; there is an outline on the back wall where the stairs went up to the loft.

Gradually the cottage speaks to us of what it used to be and what it could become.