Refusing to Leave Us

This time last year - in fact almost exactly this time last year - I wrote a eulogy to our mercedes, left broken and forlorn in a distant garage, unlikely to be repaired and unlikely to be in our lives again.

I was premature. Our old stalwart was needed (the batmobile in turn broke down and remained so throughout August as we waited for the garage mechanic to return from holiday).  So the merc was repaired and has lived a somewhat sheltered life this last year, only used for short local journeys, mainly ferrying the dogs and an occasional plant.

But this cannot continue.  Its "controle technique" (MOT) is due and it will not pass, even with repairs.  So its time really has come.  Taking it to the scrap yard doesn't feel right.  So we've asked an English mechanic who repairs and restores old mercedes whether he can make use of our old brute and he says he can.

We were due to drive over there this morning.  But the mercedes has other ideas. It won't start. The mechanic is coming round this afternoon.  We shall see.

Glut!

In the twelve years we have been here we have never had so many apricots and mirabelle plums.

Conditions in the spring must have been perfect.

Grey Morning

There's an apocryphal story in São Paulo that women in Rio wear their fur coats when the temperature drops to 70°F.

Tod tells me when he was in his early twenties and came down to Biarritz he  found the weather deeply depressing.  Expecting to lie on the beach all day in glorious sunshine, most days low cloud swept in and hung around until late afternoon.  Tough for tourists (like those yesterday in Leclerc, wearing most inappropriate clothing), but wonderful for locals who are able to get on with their lives in relative comfort.

We've had such a day here and I've gardened with pleasure all morning.

And the Cariocas in their fur coats?  The difference between the 100°F of the last few days and the 70°F of this morning means that I've been wearing long trousers and a sweater.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Yesterday, for the first time ever in our twelve years here, we walked into the post office in town and it was empty. Three counter staff lounged around chatting and greeted us warmly.  Again, a first.

Normally we avoid the local town post office like the plague.  It always takes at least twenty minutes to get served and it has a deeply frustrating system of different queues that wind round various marketing displays, so it's almost impossible to work out which is the shortest and (not necessarily the same thing) the fastest.  I invariably pick the wrong one.

Our preferred option is a tiny sub-post office in a village ten minutes drive in the opposite direction.  The post-mistress is plump and cheerful and her office acts as the local bread collection point when the scruffy, badly stocked little supermarket in the village centre shuts in high summer.  It still takes ten minutes to get in and out, even if there is no-one else there.  But we engage in cheerful conversation (good practice for my French) while she taps about twenty different keys just to tell me how much my parcel to the UK will cost.

But yesterday it had to be the one in town.  The Chronopost delivery man (I suspect it was the man, the woman is more accommodating) had made no attempt to deliver Vita and Bertie's dog food and had just dumped it at the post office. (Much to their regret as they enjoy getting into the van to help find it.) It's true he may have tried to phone us to see if we were there (we were) but we have given up answering our phone.  We are suffering an endless stream of nuisance calls which vary in content from silence, to a recorded message, to a "press one to speak to someone" and then nothing, to speaking to someone who talks too fast and won't listen.  We gather we are being offered, under government edict, loft and basement insulation for one euro.  The offer lasts until the end of June and after that we are hoping for some peace. Curiously, we may be eligible, but we are so irritated by the number of times the phone rings (three times since I started this blog) that it has become almost a point of honour to refuse it.

We may live to regret our stubborn refusal.  Driving back from town yesterday the car thermometer hit 41.5°C (that's over 106°F).  And the météo says it will be even hotter by this evening. In future years we may need that insulation. Not for warmth, but to help keep the house cool.

In the heat of the mid-day sun yesterday our town was virtually deserted. People are taking their cue from Paris where schools are closing, polluting transport is banned and residents are being encouraged to stay indoors or seek air-conditioned sanctuary.  Leclerc's cool cabinets and freezers are irresistible in this weather.

We are lucky. Our old farmhouse has thick stone walls and we keep shutters closed and manage to create draughts by opening french windows facing north and east.  Vita lies on the tiles in the kitchen, strategically placed across one such draught.

We have had heat waves in previous years but never to this degree.  Welcome to a brave new world.

It's only taken twelve years ...

... Well there's no point in rushing these things.

All our friends have done it.

They all said life would be so much easier if we did it too.

And we'd save so much money.

We thought about it, but there was an added complication with the merc and it would be expensive.

And then the years slipped by and as we still hadn't done it there didn't seem to be much point.

But then we bought the Skoda and it came already equipped and suddenly it seemed to make sense to do it.

So we borrowed one from a friend and four trips to the gravel pit and two to the town tip later, we found (of course) everyone was right.

We've done it!  We've bought a "remorque".

(The Skoda comes with a tow bar, whereas the merc needed one fitted and we baulked at the cost of fitting the tow bar and buying the trailer. We now know better.)

I've said it before ...

... and it's worth saying again, a cool wet May does wonders for the roses.

Pandemonium on the Terrace

Two baby blackbirds, one on the ground hidden among the pot plants, the other still up on the beam above our heads. And mother, with tempting morsels in her beak, on the low wall below encouraging her offspring to come down.  The noise that can be made by two small birds and one mother is astonishing.

Earlier, one of their siblings, already saying "look I can fly" crashed into my study window. I found him/her dazed in the grass and after some frantic fluttering from the baby and raucous anxiety from the father I carried the fledgling to longer grass by the sour cherry tree (smothered in small fruit) beyond the reach of the dogs.

This is a dangerous time for the blackbirds and this year's nest is in a particularly inappropriate place - on the high beam facing the kitchen door.  Bertie has been watching and waiting all week.  The landing site is right in front of him.  Sadly one youngster has already been found and dispatched.  So we keep the dogs in as much as we can and pray that the rest of the brood wastes no time learning to fly.

Fortunately it's been cold and raining all morning and the dogs are content to be in the warm.  Another few hours in which the blackbirds have the terrace to themselves and hopefully have time to find their wings and seek sanctuary further afield.

A Misty Moisty Morning

Camper vans and sleek cars with strange number plates are beginning to appear in the supermarket car parks. An elegant pair of women - mother and daughter I guess - pick over the fruit in Carrefour. Tall, thin, in taupe and beige cashmere, leopard skin ankle boots and fashionably too short wool trousers, their perfume and demeanour reek "Parisienne".  Incomers arriving for Easter.

If they are hoping for the sunny days of February and March they are in for a disappointment. For those of us who are gardening, however, these subdued early mornings are a delight.  A cuckoo calls across the valley.  A pair of pheasants have made our garden their home and they cluck contentedly as they peck at the driveway. Noises are muted in the damp air and cars driving along the ridge to work sound more distant.

I inch my way along the bank below the house lawn.  Twelve years on and various "make-overs" and it still defeats me. The coarse grasses and brambles barge their way through the bushes I am so carefully nurturing.  A small forsythia and a shrubby cistus planted last year need weeding and there, inches from my nose, are two tiny grey-brown honeycombs, hanging delicately from brown twiglets, barely visible. The bane of my summer gardening - wasps nests!    By high summer this bank will be their domain and I will stay well-away, however much the brambles and the grass need attention. But this early in the day and in this cool dank air, I'm safe. Wasps are late risers.

For the moment, our hoopoes are silent.  They too, as incomers, are happiest later in the day, in the sun, chattering noisily as they play chase across the roof of our cottage.

There's another welcome sound this spring - the buzz of hive bees on the blue flowers of the rosemary that flops over the edge of the terrace flowerbed.  The second summer we were here Serge had planted rape in our neighbouring field and the noise of contented honey bees among the yellow flowers was thunderous.  But over the years since their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing.

The apiary in the woodland across the valley had been cared for by an elderly couple, but it became too much for them and was left to decay.  Now though, a white van is often parked among the trees and a cluster of new hives has appeared.  To our joy the honey bees are returning.  Though not this early in the day, nor on such a misty, moisty morning.