Rural Life

Autumn Lockdown - Day 12 - a bit of a rant

With no other excuses today, my only time out of the house/garden was for my permitted up to 1 hour exercise no more than 1 kilometre as the crow flies from my home.  I chose a time when the clouds weren't too threatening and went for a 3.5 kilometre meander around the village, taking a couple of photos for tomorrow's blog and a couple for today. 

As I went past the Church, I remembered there was a funeral this afternoon.  Normally this means a great crowd of people outside the Church to see the coffin go in, then most file in afterwards for the service which takes about an hour, before filing out shaking holy water at the coffin and sharing a quick word with the bereaved family.  It's not an easy process, but gives some cathartic relief I believe.  Today there were few vehicles or people to be seen - numbers are limited to 30 I believe, and naturally family has the priority.  The deceased was about 95 I believe, so there was a lot of scope for family.

So as part of my walk, I went for a wander around the cemetery - I've never been in before.  The grave markers are mostly less than 100 years old, and are covered in family names that are very familiar to us, and in some cases, there are mentions of those we have known in our 15 years in the village.  It is still full of flowers - we are not so far from the 1st November and grave dressing after all, and the dead have a magnificent view across the valley as they wait for the Last Trumpet.

From there, I climbed the hill and circled round to the football pitch.  The car park has recently been dug up to allow fibre optic cable to be laid - and this is the start point of my rant.  Photo first!

Fibre is the great new hope for internet speeds I gather, and anywhere worth its salt is getting fibre in.  We have a training school for fibre technicians in Baugé.  For many months now, new green metal boxes have been appearing, verges have been dug up and relaid (badly quite often), and white vans and large umbrellas provide the work environment for the technicians.  I believe sometime in 2021 I will be offered the opportunity to sign up for this great leap forward, and it is enabling people to leave the cities and work from home.  But at what cost?  And by that I don't mean the 35.95€ a month (undoubtedly) that I will have to pay to receive this great facility.

The internet can make us all feel virtuous about not travelling and therefore not polluting, but the Cloud and the servers require huge amounts of electricity, not least for cooling.  Each smart phone, computer, laptop, screen, hard drive etc requires electricity to keep it running.  Built in obsolescence and continual software upgrades mean that we have to change these white goods relatively frequently.  Digging up the verges of roads to lay the cables has destroyed very localised ecosystems - so the banks of early purple orchids we used to see won't come back, at least for quite a long time.  The poor reinstatement means that opportunist plants like rape and ambrosia (a non-native invasive around here) take a strong foothold before oxeye daisies, wild orchids and scabious can re-establish themselves.  So while I will undoubtedly sign up, I'm not convinced the environmental cost is worth it yet.

And then people leave the cities to work from home in a greener and more pleasant environment, except that the green and pleasant environment has to be curtailed as more "nice" new houses are built for them to live in, each with a garage to house white goods, bicycles and lawnmowers, and an area of hard standing to leave at least 2 cars on.  But the people moving out of the cities don't always make the villages and rural areas live - they are used to using click and collect and supermarkets, or getting back to their roots with a bread making machine (more electricity), while the village bakeries that the older residents value go out of business or can't find anyone to take them on.  Yummy mummies rush Torquil and Davina to judo, gymnastics, boxing, tennis, football, but don't have time to support the PTA or the Comité des Fêtes, and so village life slowly dies and living in a rural area resembles living in a city, but with a bit more greenery, fast internet speeds and no public transport.

O dear - not the cheeriest post I've ever written!

Autumn Lockdown - Day 11 - new hope

I'm not talking politics, I'm not talking vaccines that have to be stored at -80ºC, I'm talking plants!

Last lockdown, I spent a lot of time tracking and worrying over my 2 small orchids that live in the bathroom.  As we got more and more freedom, they stopped producing new flowers and when we got temperatures at up to 40ºC outside and nearly 30ºC indoors, first the flowers dried and fell and then the flower stalks shrivelled too.  Mind you the flowers did each last over two months, so one can't complain.

Anyway, as the new lockdown kicked in, and I was sitting on the loo, I looked at the orchids again and one of them seemed to be getting back into action.  At first I wasn't too sure, but you can see from this photo today that a new flower stalk is pushing away and that there are a number of branches that may either be branches or will develop into flower buds.  Bad luck people, you are back to orchid watch!

And it's not only orchids.  Friends fled rural France the day before lockdown kicked in, but during the two weeks before that, they had spent hours spreading 3 tonnes of top soil, raking it, rolling it, planting bulbs in it and finally spreading loads of grass seed.  Bizarrely for November, we actually have ideal grass growing weather, moist, warm and not too sunny, and the grass seed is pulling away.  Even better, it only looks like there has been one attempt at digging up a flower bulb and it wasn't successful.  Spring should be dramatically floral in this garden next year!

From the number of hits yesterday, I think people liked Audrey the Racoon.  Perhaps Sundays need to be Racoon Days?

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 10 - big news events

Skip this if you don't feel political, but a few things have happened recently that make 2020 seem marginally less pants, although still the worst year on record for a very long time.  Firstly some reasonable news about an acquaintance fighting cancer (never good), in that it appears to have been caught in time (fingers crossed).  Then during the afternoon a rather weird way of announcing an election result - it was the media that announced the victor in the States.  No concession (not really to be expected I guess), no formal vivat rex type moment from a senior judiciary (well they are political appointees after all), just CNN, Associated Press and the New York Times pointing out that with Pennsylvania going Democrat, Biden has won.  It feels odd, not least as previously the BBC, FranceInfo, MSN and the American press all had different views on who had won what, but now they seem to be unanimous, so that is it.  A bottle of pink fizz was sacrificed on the altar of positive news, even though it is likely to have little effect on us personally and for a while.  Covid is after all still the biggest story in town.

Or is it?  Today at 13:03, off the Sables d'Olonne on the Vendée coast, 33 intrepid skippers started off on what must be the most gruelling race known to man - the Vendée Globe single handed, unsupported round the world yacht race.  The current record is just under 75 days.  There are, I believe, 6 female skippers in the race.  The fact that the race is still on is great, and I hope to be able to follow progress once I find the right link on social media.

In other news, we were felling trees and digging spuds this morning.  I did go and check on the monster badger set in the wildflower meadow and found rather better badger prints for you.

I dug up 9 more spuds - just a final 8 to go.  I wanted to crack the lot, but with all the rain, and working on a slightly different bit of the plot, the soil was wet, claggy and heavy.  So I admitted defeat after 9 and bagged up the spoils - it was good I stopped when I did, as I didn't have enough bags for more.  John weighed them when we got home - 31 pounds of spuds!!  It would have been more but there appears to be a line of "poorer" soil across the plot, where the numbers and size of tubers was less and the leeks along side are looking a bit sad. 

And finally, a Sunday treat!  A friend of a friend who lives in the States and is a cat person, feeds some local critters.  She shared some of her amazing photos of said critters, specifically, Audrey the Racoon!  Say thank you nicely!

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 9 - market day

When I am doing my evaluation and research work, Saturday is MY day.  I enjoy the chat and the sights and smells of the market, and the afternoon is normally some form of garden or outdoor work.  Today was no exception, even in times of lockdown.

First thing to be done was feeding the chickens, and in addition to sparrow city, I also run the gauntlet of the "digital" starling that sits on the roof.  He is always perky and has a lot to say for himself, but has modelled his song on the sounds produced by an early Gameboy or similar and mobile phone rings.  What a depressing effect modern society can have!

Then it was market time - and boy was it crowded, so a good thing it is still in the Place de l'Europe so we can socially distance!  Didier the Purveyor of Yoghurt was right, in that I was at the market at the same time as last week, but he still had yoghurts (albeit only flavoured ones, not ones with pieces in) and rice puddings a plenty.  Then the dry goods caravan was in so I decided to try her rolled oats for porridge (3.50 Euros a kilo).  We will report back on how they are, but we are having to explore French sources for oats, as the stash in the bottom of the bureau that I bought 7 years ago won't last forever.  Something that is without plastic packaging, and may well be local and/or organic has to be a good option.

It was a beautiful morning again and unseasonably warm, so I took a moment or 5 to admire the two great buildings that take up two sides of the Place de l'Europe - the Tribunal and the Chateau.  The Tribunal is about 150 years old and dramatic.  It was one of 18 buildings across France receiving headline support from the French Heritage Lottery this year, and got 500,000 Euros to kick start the 5 million Euro restoration plan.  The building behind it used to be the prison, but was gutted and redeveloped as an art and culture centre a while back.

The chateau is rather older - about 1450 I think - and was the hunting lodge of King Renée of Anjou. It too has had a chequered past, and the exhibits inside are getting a relooking I believe.  When we first arrived, it was a museum with lots of cases of old stones and bits of pottery, so not totally exciting.  Then about 15 years ago they redid it, to make it more interactive and interesting, and with nice exhibition space on the ground floor.  On the other side of the chateau they have made a physic garden, which is pretty and interesting in the summer, but at this time of year, is rather black and dull.

So there you go, a bit of an introduction to Baugé!

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 8 - looking up

Well for the first thought of the day anyway.  It was another beautiful morning and not so cold as the last two, when I went up the garden to feed the chickens, so I took my time.  There were a few clouds in the sky - classic harbingers of a change in the weather, wispy cirrus that I was told were called horse tails when I was at school.  Goodness knows what they call them now, but I'm sure cirrus still stands.  There is a front on its way, although it may avoid doing much to us, other than raising the temperatures - they forecast 18°C for us tomorrow!

The chickens were being rather good this morning.  Normally Delenn (the grey one) gets bullied away from the place where I drop the treats, I do that so that I have a clear run at the grain hopper, but today they all played nicely.  Either they have finally established a pecking order that all agree with, or they are plotting something.  The two brown ones are Muck and Brass, couldn't tell you which is which, but where there's Muck, there's Brass, so who cares?  When we are down to only one brown one, it will be an issue, at which point I will have to be more decisive.

We are in an at risk zone for avian 'flu, and the next commune over is on high alert.  If we go on to high alert, we will need to cover the whole chicken run with fine mesh to keep the sparrows and other wild birds out of the run.  There is a colony of about 30 sparrows living in our bay tree, so it is a real issue and risk.  The only other solution would be to cull the chickens but we obviously don't want to do that.  That's fine for the normal hens, but Bridie the Bantam is another issue altogether.

Bridie arrived in our garden late last year, worked out we were a soft touch, fell in awe of Dummer the Big White Chicken (now deceased) and stayed.  She roosts in the shed mainly, has a feed station outside the main chicken run and spends her day (when they are confined) watching the big chickens and paying homage to whoever she thinks is Chief Chicken (now Delenn it would appear).  When they are out and about trashing the garden, she follows them around, never too close, and avoiding Poirot the Cat.  We can't really get near her, so I am not at all sure what happens if we move to High Alert.  Something to worry about, if it happens, I guess.

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 2 - retail in the time of confinement

Saturday is always a shopping day for me - has been for years.  I do the small local shops of wherever I live to get food and treats for the days/week ahead.  It was the same when I lived in Hertford, Wallsend and Worcester, so no different now. 

However was a sad day in some ways.  For the past 15 years, I have walked up to the boulangerie about 200 metres from my front door and have bought pastries, bread and sometimes cakes made by the very talented Bruno Pellé, and sold with charm and a caring word by his lovely wife Arlette, or one of their three children.  But today was the last day - health reasons dictate that he stops working the fierce hours expected of a baker (2:30am to 11am 6 days a week, Christmas included, and sometimes an afternoon shift too), and they have not been able to find anyone prepared to take the business over.  From tomorrow, we have to seek our bread elsewhere, and further away (not so easy in the time of confinement).

But we do not live on bread alone, and as the outdoor markets are still open, it was into Baugé for the usual purchases - fish, fruit, vegetables, raw milk, desserts, thick cream, crèpes and galettes, and delicious but unspellable things from the totally charming Moroccan family.  The market was heaving.  By the time I got to the milk products chap - Didier - all yoghurts, all bar 3 rice puddings and all bar 1 milk pudding had been carried off by others.  As he sorted out milk and cream for me, we pondered on the phenomenon - "they will never eat all they bought from me over the next week, it's impossible!"  Well, his stuff is delicious, but clearly there was some panic buying going on too.  "The psychologists are watching" was another clear message!  By the time I got back to the vegetable stall, they had run out of carrots.  Carrots!!!!

For all we are restricted in our outings, and people had to wear masks, there was some insouciance among those in the market - for the first time in ages my bottom got bumped several times by the basket of the lady behind me in the fish queue.  She also didn't understand Paddington stares, so I guess she was a Parisian taking advantage of her second home.  Hopefully she will go home tomorrow if that is how she is going to behave.

In all this, one of the key gripes is not lockdown itself, but the existence of unfair competition from the super and hypermarkets (last week it was between restaurants (allowed) and bars (closed)).  One good meme doing the rounds today wondered if Covid might not be better controlled if we closed the super/hypermarkets and other big stores and let the small shops run the economy for a couple of weeks.  Provided I had a good stock of cat food in, I would so totally support that!

Remember if you have small local shops open, use them, even if it costs a few pence/centimes more!  Because once they have gone, they won't come back.

 

Autumn Lockdown - new beginings

I guess it was predictable, and following a day mostly spent in bed with a migraine, it was with enormous trepidation that we sat and watched the President's address last night.  As expected, he announced a four week national lockdown, but kicking in a day or two sooner than many had thought.  There was I think less warning this time, or rather, less official warning.  We are also on alert here for bird 'flu, so things are pretty special.  So here's a heads up - from tomorrow, the daily lockdown blog post starts again!

This one seems to me more daunting than the last one.  Already days here are short, with only 10 hours between sunrise and sunset, and that will only get less between now and late December.  The weather will get worse - despite a slight reprieve in temperatures over the next few days, we are heading for winter, and can spend less time outside and less comfortably.  There really is nothing to look forward to now in 2020 - all events are cancelled that we would usually go to - and the last of the "part timers" left today - we doubt we will see any others before the New Year now.

The glories of Autumn are nearing their end.  We found these cèpes in the One Acre Wood a couple of weeks ago, and there may be a couple more this weekend, but then days are too short and cold to get them going again until next year.  These were delicious by the way!

This year has been particularly good for cyclamen.  The ones in the lawn started in July, and are still going, with some very dense patches of pink flowers.  The ones in the One Acre Wood don't last as long but have been going for a couple of months now, including two new flowering corms which have clearly self-seeded.  These delicate white flowers are a real joy to me, whatever the weather.

Autumn also means we have an extra visitor downstairs - the log fire.  It is like another member of the family and a welcome sight and feeling on cold and wet nights.  Lockdown brings challenges with finding firewood - we might have to go out and about with our best Professional Forest Workers kit on, but that is something to worry about another day.

The same day as the new confinement was announced, I received my official number for my new way of earning money.  I am now officially registered as an autoentrepreneur that helps people out with translating and interpreting (NOT official translations having said that) to get through daily life over here in France.  So getting that business up and running when I can't go out and about very much is going to be really easy, isn't it?  2020 just keeps giving!

 

Summer Reflections 5 - it's nearly autumn

There are storms in the UK and we are due temperatures below 20ºC at the weekend - summer is definitely on its way out. 

During the summer we had the migrants from the south - swifts, swallows and house martins - who made each day special with their aerobatics and their song, loud and strident for the swifts, soft and bubbling for the swallows and martins.  We also had the migrants from the north - friends with second homes in the area, finally allowed across the Channel to enjoy their other homes and gardens and breathe a bit more freely in our rural paradise.

The UK Government-imposed quarantine on the whole of France (other governments do localised ones, which seems a bit more sane) saw the northern migrants flee home, with no real idea of when they can come back "officially".  There are still a few stragglers for whom quarantine holds limited fear, although insurance might be a bigger issue.  The weather and the seasons mean our other migrants are heading back south.  It is a couple of weeks since I heard the shriek of a swift, and the swallows are grouping up and heading off slowly now: we won't see them again until March or April next year.

This year the drift to autumn feels sadder than usual - normally there is a gentle melancholy once the Comice is over, knowing that days are getting shorter and cooler and wetter.  This year it feels more stark.  There are no Comices due to Covid, and in a normal year, every weekend in September is taken up with some event or other (mechoui, Patrimoine, forum des associations, the Bake Off, the volunteers' picnic), this year events are few and far between.  The forum des associations goes ahead with no demonstrations, food or drink and patrimoine will happen, but rather reduced and with less fanfare.  And then nothing.

We all sit and wait to see what the Second Wave will be like.  It will be important to seek out the small discoveries that make life more joyous - I might have to start a new blog series on that!

In the meantime here are photos of the new windmills at Chigné, not yet commissioned and some nutters are trying to get them removed via judicial review!  Also a photo of an unhappy carp - the oxygen levels in the public lake don't seem quite right for it, and a nice view of the church and a dramatic sunset.

Summer reflections 1 - the weather isn't right

As my Facebook feeds and my memories tell me, in general the first half of July is scorching hot, bright sunshine, occasional and scary thunder storms and farmers working around the clock to get the grain harvest in.  Currently only the last of these seems to be running to form.  The weather is cool (low 20s at best) and a bit dull.  That hasn't stopped the maize from growing, although our own sweetcorn is unlikely to hit 2 foot tall.  I no longer have an evening vista to enjoy.

Some of the gardens we keep an eye on have different crops surrounding them.  This is not what you might think but very closely related.  Germination rates seem to have been pretty poor.

Evidence that Covid-19 is still a threat can be found if you have to go hospital visiting.  I'm not sure how the image below is supposed to bring comfort and succour to the invalid being visited, but that is the only way you can be to get in.  At least they don't stick a thermometer in your ear any more to check your temperature!

For those who don't see my Facebook posts, while the sweetcorn is unlikely to do anything this year, we have done well on garlic, shallots and potatoes.  The spuds were ones I robbed from 3 different plants, while rummaging in the soil to see how they were getting on.  Rather well was the answer - they were delicious with butter and a nice lump of salmon.

Day 26 of 30 Days Wild - back to the files

It's been another of those days when I run from pillar to post without really getting anywhere, so it is difficult, if not impossible to reflect on French life or wild things.  On the good news front, the supermarket shelves seemed to be back to near normal and I was able to get age appropriate wet food for the cats - I'm not sure they will thank me, but I feel better about that.

In a minute we are off to celebrate at a distance the birthday of one of the Chinon Two - this is taking social distancing to extremes as he is about 80km away, but tomorrow we will go and see him and celebrate properly (hint - this means no blog tomorrow!).

So for today, I will delight you with weird flowers seen on Guadeloupe - I am pretty sure none of them are native to the island, but they sure are happy there!  I suspect the colourful bits are bracts not flowers, before the biologists get on to me.  These ones are upward facing.

These ones are downward facing - not so easy to use in flower arrangements.

And this one is just magnificent - I think it is called something like a china flower or porcelain flower. Not the scientific name obviously.