The Economist's cover this morning says it all ...

Well, yesterday came and went.  And the deed's done.

Friends in the UK ask us how we will be affected.  Not so different from asking someone on Day One how they will be affected by their divorce.  The question requires a shrug of the shoulders (ideally with a French flourish) and a "who can tell?" expression, followed by a murmured "ask me in a few years' time."

About the only thing we know for sure about Brexit is we cannot vote in the up-coming local elections in March.  Shame.  We will have a new mayor, new staff in the office and several new councillors  and it would have been good to have been showing solidarity and commitment to our local commune.  Once he's elected (assuming it's a he) we'll have to pop into the office and introduce ourselves.

Otherwise, life goes on much as normal and the uncertainties - healthcare, pensions, freedom of movement (or not) - remain to be resolved.  We will be required to change our cartes de sejour, so laboriously applied for just over two years ago, for new residency permits.  We are reassured by the French government that those who already been through the process will go through minimum hassle.  No doubt though we will need new photos, fingerprints taken again at the prefecture in Agen and yet again Tod's fingers will not scan properly and they will struggle to find a way to confirm he is who he is.

The hiatus of the last three years has been painful and there is still much anger on the ex-pat forums.  Some feel it's time to move on, get over it, stop whinging, whilst others say why should they when there has been such an injustice.

At least, now though we can begin to move forwards, even if it is into the unknown.  There is to be a discussion this coming Friday at our local language club.  It will, no doubt, be something of an anticlimax for the French audience since most of the answers from the English will include a Gallic shrug and a "we don't yet know".

I'm glad all our gite guests have already booked their holidays with us for this coming summer.  A gentle reminder and reassurance that our lives will continue and, day-to-day, there will be much that remains the same.

The wind is bitter ...

... but it's a bright, sunshiny day and we need to get out of the house.  So we decide to take the dogs in the back of the Skoda to one of our local villages for a stroll.

The village has a mill and a millpond, a new salle de fête painted the most unfortunate grubby mauve colour which clashes with the soft yellow-beige of the surrounding old buildings.  It's an up-and-coming place where properties have been lovingly restored and we feel it's time we see what the locals have been up to.

Two miles into the journey, as we round the first roundabout with its miniature tobacco drying barn the flat tyre warning light comes on. We've lost count of the number of flat tyres we've had over the years.  Narrow country lanes and oncoming cars that determinedly stay on the crown of the road means that all too often we are the ones to move onto the rubble-strewn verge and over the hidden threats of large discarded nails and screws.

A big, red fireman's van comes towards us and stops.  Do we need help?  We smile and wave reassuringly. No, we're fine. With a "bon courage" he waves and departs.

The dogs are sitting on top of the spare wheel, so the first task is to get them out of the boot and into the front, which they much prefer anyway.  Then wind up the strange, much too flimsy-looking jack which leans suspiciously to one side.  Then find the small thingy which flips off the thief-proof caps covering the wheel nuts.  In flipping the caps off there is considerable danger of the caps flying through the air and disappearing into said rubble-strewn verge, never to be seen again.Then realise, cannot undo wheel nuts while suspiciously leaning jack is raised. So lower jack, loosen wheel nuts, move jack, put it on a carpet taken from the passenger well.

Opening the front door of the car to get the carpet is a mistake as by this stage the dogs are bored and want to get out.  Jack raised again, nuts removed and now, merely a matter of lifting wheel off. But no. The wheel won't budge, despite much heaving and kicking of wheel and concern that the jack might collapse under the strain.

So we need help and someone who knows more about cars than we do.  But we have no phone. Neither of us.  Well why would we?  We're only going for an afternoon stroll to a local village. That means one of us has to walk home - two miles, uphill most of the way - at least forty minutes.  Tod starts walking. I stay with the car and the dogs, glad of the heavy winter coat I'm wearing in the bitter wind. I'm reluctant to get into the car in case the jack collapses.

He had not even got as far as the roundabout when I see the car coming our way stop.  I see his hand signals as he demonstrates not being able to get the tyre off.  People get out, put Tod in the back, the car turns round and disappears up the hill taking him home. And I stand and wait.

A Porsche coming towards me slows, pulls past and then stops.  Out gets a couple.  Do I need help?  I explain the stuck wheel phenomenon. The man says he'll call his brother (or maybe he said father - his south west accent is strong).  As so often, I find the woman easier to understand.  She says she knows me because she lives in the village where we used to walk Clara and Smudge, our two elderly Airedales - heavens that was eleven, twelve years ago.

The man returns from his phone call and asks if I have a mallet in the boot.  Nothing heavier than the wheel brace.  Lying under the car he starts hitting something with the brace, but no joy.  His other half sets off at a jog for a farmhouse down a track on the other side of the road and returns with a large hammer and some thin pieces of wood - all a complete mystery to me.  In the meantime the man tells me he is the brother of the local town mayor and they are off to a Sunday outside flea market (in this wind?).  But of course.  They need to get out.  I know the feeling.

He instructs me to take the handbrake off and put the car in gear - that much I do understand - and he disappears back under the car where loud banging noises can be heard.  I worry about the jack collapsing.  Suddenly the wheel shudders and drops forward - it's free.  They show me how the wheel has rusted and seized itself to the car.

The hammer is returned to the farm, the spare is rapidly fitted, the jack lowered, wheel nuts tightened and they head smiling back to the Porsche. I shower them with thanks, wish them "bonne continuation" and lots of cheap purchases at the flea market. They call back to me, how cold the wind is.

Still no sign of Tod, so I decide to drive home and catch him coming back. I get in the driver's seat, the dogs are all over me but they can't go back in the boot, it's piled with a punctured tyre, wonky jack, wheel brace and emergency red triangle.  There's no key in the ignition!  Tod's taken it with him!  So I get out of the car, lean against the boot, glad of my thick winter coat in the bitter wind. And wait.

A lone cyclist in immaculate white lycra strip comes by, stops, turns round and comes back to me - is the car "en panne"?  Can he help?  I explain and he heads on his way. I suspect grateful that his white strip remains unsullied by our very dirty car.

Finally, I see the batmobile in the distance.  Not knowing (of course) that I've had help, Tod has called a friend who is riding to the rescue.  We sort out car keys.  Abandon plans to walk anywhere - a hot cup of tea calls.  I head home with two confused dogs who are very happy to be sitting on the back seat rather than in the boot. Tod waits for our friend.

Later, we both agree, from now onwards mobile phones must be carried at all times. We also agree how wonderful the French are in times of crisis.

C'est Pénible!

The young woman steps out of the kayak at the edge of the water and onto the road. The young man (presumably her husband) follows with the paddles and drags the canoe onto the muddy verge.

"C'est pénible!" she says as she reaches me. "It's painful" doesn't quite convey enough of her distress as we look back along the flooded road to where brown, twig-filled water swirls around her house.

In brilliant sunshine (the first in what feels like weeks) small groups of townsfolk stand on the belvedere in the town centre, looking down over the flood plain.  Water glistens in the fields as far as the eye can see. Isolated farmhouses stand as small islands.

Families, camera phones raised in all directions, wander across the bridge in the middle of the empty road, passed by the occasional gendarme and rescue vehicle. Elderly men in caps, swap anecdotes about which of the floods has been the worst and lean over the balustrade to watch the thundering water fight its way under the tops of the arches, great branches packed with debris banked up against the pillars. On the far side of the bridge the water laps across what was once a road heading south.

After two months of rains, the land is finally saturated, brooks and streams are filled to overflowing, pouring into the two big rivers.  The sirens first sounded two days ago when the Garonne initially broke its banks and the water's been rising ever since. This morning the record height of 9.04 meters (29.6 feet) set in January 2009 was broken. By nine o'clock this evening the vigicrues website reports 9.25 meters (30.3 feet). Fortunately the level is beginning to fall back.  The graph peaks well below the 10.72 meters (35 feet) of March 1930.

Hopefully the young woman and her husband will only need the kayak for a few more days.

And from SudOuest newspaper:

Only in France!

A wine "offer" in this morning's in-box.

I'm darning ...

... and my grandmother will be turning in her grave.

We think Bertie may have been weaned too early.  He sucks and chews blankets, towels and (to our horror) the deep red, heavy-duty linen, loose covers of the sofa in the lounge.  The latter he has only attacked twice, following a fair old ticking off.  He sucks them 'til he removes a small, perfectly oval piece of fabric which he then proceeds to chew contentedly.

The covers have had these three small holes in them for some considerable time.  They do not look pretty as the beige lining fabric of the cushions peeps through.  The task has been "on the list" but never reached the top.  Until now.

As we are staying in the house and not decamping to the cottage this winter, we are beginning to realise that the house needs more loving care.  It is too easy to live on the veranda and in the kitchen throughout summer and ignore the scruffiness elsewhere. Not any more.  Especially as we have friends coming for Christmas lunch and no doubt by late afternoon we will want to collapse in front of a roaring fire against the said Bertie-sucked deep red cushions.  So I am darning the holes, having found a spare bit of the loose cover fabric which came with the original washing instructions, what, some twenty-odd years ago.

My father's mother never had her hands empty.  She was always busy.  I have a faded black and white photo of Mum, Nana and Granddad relaxing in the garden.  I'm in my pram, so it must have been the summer of 1947. Mum on the grass, Granddad in a deckchair and there Nana is with a colander on her lap shelling peas.

If she wasn't shelling peas, or stringing beans, then she was darning socks on a pale beige wooden mushroom.  Beautiful, small, neat darns, squares of interlaced grey wool, the blunt end of the darning needle passing over one thread, under the next.

I'm sorry Nana.  My darns are much coarser and lumpier, but I promise you, no-one will notice after a good Christmas lunch.  (You will though!)

Yet again ...

... I am weeping for a dog and a family I have never met.  Yet through the magic of this Blog Land and Angus's eloquent words, I have been privileged each day to share a little of their lives and learn to love deeply this family fellow, who at only six years young has left them and his sister bereft.

Sleep in peace Bob.  The messages from round the world tell you how much you and the family you cared for are loved.

Bob. The Family Fellow. 2013 -2019

Still Life

This month's theme at our photo club is "Still Life".  Struggling to find anything to photograph, between downpours I dashed out and grabbed a few bits and pieces from the garden.

I'm amazed at the amount of colour still there. Haven't had much of a chance to see any of it these last days.  We've even been keeping the shutters closed. Very gloomy.  Very French.

I should obviously put on my mac and wellington boots and get out more!

He Marched Them Up to the Top of the Hill and Marched Them Down Again

Tod and the dogs returned bedraggled and wind-blown from their early Sunday morning walk. Normally a long, leisurely stroll along the ridge before the hunters are out in their white vans, today was a quick march up to the top of the drive, an investigation of the large open barn that houses a couple of containers and some mouldy old bales of straw and then a turn into the teeth of the wind and the rain and back down again, home.

Our Indian summer is long gone.  We've had days of "raining cats and dogs" (the library of congress tells me the meaning is lost in the mists of time.  I like the suggestion that it might be a corruption of an old English word "catadupe" meaning cataract or waterfall.) We've certainly had waterfalls of rain - the water butts and the underground tank by the cottage are full to overflowing - and weeding between the cloud bursts has become a pleasure as the mud easily gives up normally recalcitrant roots.

The wind, however, is something new, arriving during the night and due to continue through the next couple of days.  Further west, the Gironde and Landes are on orange alert.

Normally, with weather like this, we would be thinking of decamping to the cottage for winter, but this year we're embarking on a new venture - staying put in the house.  In recent years our annual transhumance has become tedious, not least because there is a Bermuda Triangle between the house and the cottage and important papers - tax statements, annual estimates for the electricity - vanish without trace.

Our decision to stay put has been made possible by changing our wafer-thin watery glassed, small-paned, draughty windows along the veranda.  A precious reminder of the age of our old farmhouse, it's taken me, with aching heart, twelve years to agree reluctantly with Tod that enough is enough.  So they are gone and we have doubled-glazed, hand-made, beautifully sealed, easily opened, new wooden frames.

In all the gusting wind and driving rain our new windows are proving their worth. Shutters snugly shut, the noise from outside is but a distant murmur.  The house has become cosy.