They came through in waves heading south and west towards where the Pyrenees reach down to the sea , moving fast, at the speed of the scudding clouds silvered by the moon. I heard their cries right overhead but could not see them as I stood in the dark by the house front steps, clutching a pot plant. Cranes. Harbingers of winter weather.
Our mild November is ending. It's time to move the still-flowering geraniums into somewhere frost-free if I am to save any for next summer. I huddle the few remaining pots against the south facing wall of the cottage; maybe they'll be safe there for a few more days while I finish other more urgent tasks.
It's time to finish planting before the clay hardens in the frost: a viburnum bush, full of sweet smelling pink flowers; tiny rose coloured cyclamen; bulbs that will become deep coral tulips next spring; white and yellow primulas; a young turquoise-green holly; three blueberry bushes, with dark red autumn-tinted leaves.
It's time to cut the last of the rose buds from the bushes by the swimming pool, still bravely flowering, and bring them into the house safe from the frost.
And it's time to shut the cottage shutters, curl up on the sofa, watch bad television and old movies in the warm and make plans for Christmas.
Bertie races backwards and forwards across the field, barking at the sky, chasing flocks of small, twittering, brown birds barely visible against the intense blue.
A buzzard lazily circles high above, mewing as it twists on ascending thermals.
The distant noonday siren in the town wails across the fields and the noise of drilling from the farmhouse across the valley that belongs to the retired police captain from Paris ceases - lunchtime.
A fat worm slowly squeezes its way between clods of earth that I've turned over, hoping I haven't noticed him.
The clay is perfect, neither too wet, nor too dry, falling easily off the tines of the fork as I work.
One of the trees came with us in the back of the lorry to France, root-bound in a large green pot; lovingly carried with us from house to house since the early nineties, when my father, then elderly and frail, helped me plant a small bowl with a tiny Cyprus and a few daffodil bulbs. I seem to remember the daffodils towered over the little fir.
I think it would amuse my father to know it has survived all these years and is now six foot. I could almost feel the tree stretch and breathe a sigh of relief as I teased out its roots to fill the hole I'd dug.
Dad loved France and things French. He would find our sloping, swooping field on the side of a Garonne valley a very suitable final resting place for "his" tree.
My mother had an ancient brown Harrods box with a canvas strap in which she kept old photographs. The box and its contents fascinated me as a child: those faded sepia images of elderly women in long dresses and bonnets; men with moustaches posing stiffly and uncomfortably in three piece suits; young men in uniform.
And then I forgot the box for decades.
After she died I found the box again and regretted that I had never asked her who these people were. Which of these solemn-faced individuals are my great grand parents, great uncles and aunts? Or indeed, from the age of some of the barely-visible images, my great, great grand relations.
My father's mother, Emily, had three brothers Edgar, Alfred and Albert and two sisters Caroline (Carrie) and Florence. I remember Carrie, just, as a small, elderly spinster in a long black dress. All I have of my other great-aunt and uncles are a few tattered picture postcards - "Dear Emmie, this is a photo we had taken at Eastbourne, we had a good time, will come and see you before long, from your loving brother and sister". Yes, butwhich brother and sister? -and those images of young men in three-piece suits and then uniforms.
But there, among the unexplained photos and their many untold stories is one that speaks all too clearly. A cross in a muddy field of crosses with the words:
"In memory of 572074 REN A ELLIS 1\17th London Regt. Died of wounds 25.8.17"
From the Commonwealth War Graves Commission I learn more. He is buried in The Huts Cemetery in Belgium, outside Ieper. The cemetery takes its name from a line of huts strung along the road from Dickebusch (now Dikkebus) to Brandhoek, which were used by field ambulances during the 1917 Allied offensive on this front. Much of the cemetery was filled between July and November 1917 and nearly two-thirds of the burials were of gunners from nearby artillery positions. There are now 1,094 Commonwealth burials of the First World War in the cemetery.
Albert (the baby of the family) had joined the 17th (County of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (Poplar and Stepney Rifles) "A" Company.
He was just twenty-four when he died.
"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them." Laurence Binyon
... (the eldest of my mother's many siblings) and her husband Uncle Dave had a smallholding in the depths of rural Sussex.
She grew dahlias and chrysanthemums to sell at the gate. As a small child I was entranced by the forest of giant brightly coloured pompoms and spiky stars that towered above my head in a great swathe leading up the path to the front door, which I never saw open. We always went round the side, in through the hot glass lean-to smelling of musty ripening tomatoes, where Dave used to sit in an old easy chair in his none-too-clean shirt-sleeves and pullover.
Her ghost was at my shoulder today, tut-tutting at my neglect of the dahlias I planted in the hot border in front of the cottage. To my surprise, one of the dahlias - a deep rich burgundy - has turned into a triffid; its many stems weaving and intertwining, bent double from the weight of the heavy blooms. The strong southerly winds of last weekend had broken several of its tallest stems and with twine and tomato plant poles I was trying to recover and support what was left.
I realise now that the "forest" I walked through as a child would have been tall even for adults. Lizzie must have staked and twined those many heads with such loving care, day in day out, keeping them straight and strong to make the most splendid of long-lasting cut flowers.
I'll cut some of ours tomorrow. They won't be here for much longer. This evening in the dark, as I closed the gate at the end of the terrace, I heard the wild cry of the cranes, speeding before the cold air coming down from the north that will drive our temperatures down to zero later this week.
Next year, Lizzie, I promise to take better care of this dark beauty.
I wave them goodbye with a guilty sense of relief and wander back into the kitchen to make myself another cup of tea. The sink is still full of the breakfast washing-up but I can leave it to later. Much later. Nobody here now to impress.
The bed linen in the cottage needs washing, but the sheets and duvet covers will never dry in this weather. So I'll leave them for a day. Or three. No rush.
Supper tonight - just us. At home. And not much conversation.
Maybe watch an old film. Or a repeat of "Have I Got News for You".
I can't remember how I first heard of Melody Gardot. Almost certainly it was from one of the blogs I follow, but which? I'm glad I found her. Her voice is wonderful and her music poignant - all the more so, when one knows her story.
She has been in France this summer. At the Marciac Jazz Festival back in July, Eric and his son went and became instant "groupies", telling us later, one summer's evening in a café over a beer, that she was appearing again in Orléans in October and they were going again. We regretted missing the chance to see her live and then, last week, learnt that she would be appearing in Bordeaux at the Base Sous-Marine this last Saturday night. So, on the spur of the moment, we went.
The Base houses the World War Two submarine pens, built by the Germans as a place from which to launch their U-boats into the Atlantic. The photos on the internet show enormous dirty slabs of forbidding concrete with water still lapping round the pillars inside. Hardly, one would have thought, the place for a jazz concert. And what on earth to wear on a cold rainy October night? Would we be standing? The official website for the Base is remarkably coy about any creature comforts. So thermals and layers seemed to be the order of the day and cushions for any seats. And sandwiches for the journey home - the French start their evening entertainment late.
Bordeaux is a miracle of restoration - now a UNESCO World Heritage site - with its grand eighteenth century cream coloured mansions along the quays facing onto the Gironde and the new boutiques, restaurants and offices with trendy names in the great old warehouses. And then, suddenly, in the dark, we turn left and drive alongside the basin itself and we have gone back fifty years. Weeds push up through rubble strewn pavements. Barbed wire fences off derelict buildings. Old chandlers with dim lighting sit alongside the occasional edgy nightclub or restaurant. And there, in the middle, is the aggressive, ugly reminder of Germany's occupation of this part of France. As we park (to our relief right outside, this does not feel like an urban landscape where one wanders at night) the cheerful crowd streaming towards the light from the open doors reassures - as does their attire. Coats, boots and scarves are the order of the evening - we have not over-reacted.
And the bleak photos on the websites are right. We walk across a bridge over the chilly water of one of the pens and turn alongside the great pillars of concrete towering above our heads. Ah, but the lighting! Deep reds illuminate the pillars, reflected down into the water. I have my small camera, which cannot possibly do the effect justice. And the venue itself - a welcoming grandstand of raked plastic seats (good). And a blanket on every seat! (We're glad of the cushions we've brought as well.) The atmosphere is moody, with a darkened open stage - and continues to be so as the concert starts - a single woman in red high-heeled shoes, beating out the rhythm of her song with her feet, barely visible in the low-lit gloom.
We're glad we went. Her husky voice is wonderful and the individual performances of her band superb. But the sound balance in the echoing concrete arena frustrated. Too often her voice and her words were lost in the heavy base and over-amplified accompanying instruments. We suspect the more intimate location of Marciac would have served her better. The French were ecstatic - but then for many her words would have been meaningless sounds; so the fact that she was no more than another instrument in the group would not have mattered.
For us, the best moment was when she sang "Baby I'm a Fool". Just her, her guitar and a soft brush on a drum - her voice and words crystal clear in the cavernous dark of a U-boat pen.
