Rural Life

Not staying on top of things

I set off on my glorious adventure to the UK something like two and a half weeks ago, and I have been home for a week and I am still chasing my tail trying to catch up on all fronts.  I've not downloaded the lovely photos of the Broads and my visit to the UK, I've not written up my notes from my visit, I've not caught up with all my clients in France, I've not planted all the potatoes yet, I've not got to grips with the garden or the window boxes or the fridge or planning meals or anything.  I feel totally inadequate! 

Yesterday we did do the village "vide grenier" or car boot sale, so actually getting anything sorted out for that was a last minute effort, and we didn't have as much stuff on display as perhaps we would have liked.  But we were there!

Actually it was probably rather a good thing that we didn't have too much stuff out on display, and certainly no books or clothes.  That was a deliberate choice as the weather the day before wasn't brilliant.  Even so we got rid of some big items, although we did feel a bit mugged by two wee munchkins who cut down our ticket price on a cauldron by 50%!  Still, when the rain came, it was heavy and quite long duration, so it was good we didn't have fabrics other than the table covering.

We hung on for another hour, but there were no paying punters, so we legged it early and were able to spend time drying everything we hadn't sold and putting it away carefully for next year.  

The trail camera has moved and been installed on a track used a lot by the local fauna.  The grass around it was very long, so there has been limited action, although a nice bunny did pop up one day.

Rather less appealing and also rather less welcome was a suspected sighting of a coypu.  As we are desperate to keep the water in the ponds to support the 5 rather large fish (plus the army of noisy frogs and the ducks), we don't really want coypu digging into the banks and potentially draining the pools into the ditches below.  They are also a non-native, invasive species that really has no place in France, and certainly not somewhere where there is very little water held in the wetland anyway.

A much more welcome visitor was this Red Admiral butterfly I found yesterday sunning himself after a shower.  My Dad used to make up stories for me about a Red Admiral and a Painted Lady, which I am sure had a subversive subtext.  It is a shame I can't remember any of them, and that he didn't write any down as far as I know.

We had a visitor of a different sort today at the Garden - easy enough for me to hear, as I was having mud smeared over me by a cat, but it wasn't until it was nearly overhead that John heard it over the noise of the rotavator and through his ear protectors.  The Air Force still use the local airport, even though little else does nowadays, and this looks like a pretty heavy cargo plane - possibly one used for refuelling others in flight?  I'm sure someone will tell me!

We also went for a walk around the One Acre Wood to admire the lily of the valley, see some wild medlar flowers, and be enchanted by the veil of green that has crept up on us.  It was rather sadder to see that a number of the large chestnuts have not survived some very difficult growing conditions.  First it was the new invasive wasp that targeted sweet chestnuts, and weakened them by growing its young in the leaf buds.  Then the plot next door was clear felled about three years ago, changing the light and drainage patterns.  Then last year's drought and fierce heat, and finally a dry February all seem to have contributed to a number of trees having no leaves at all this year.  While good for our heating needs, we have to hope that cutting down the dead trees will encourage new growth from the boles, as many are several hundred years old.

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I don't know if the last photo will come out when you read this - but I really can't bear trying to reload them all again!

Finally here is a purple orchid we spotted in a ditch near the wood - they seem a bit late this year, and I am observing the progress of the bee orchids as I think we have a problem!

Until next week!

 

 

That was the weird week that was

Last week's blog was published a bit earlier than normal, as we had been invited to a semi-private Easter Sunday gig.  Being British, we naturally arrived well too early, but did get a reasonably sensible parking space (not that I was driving) at what in daylight seemed to be a ruined and deserted farmstead.  But as night and the fairy lights took over, it turned into something that 15 to 25 year old me would have been utterly delighted by - a rock/indie rave complete with party barn and stage, oil drum fires and people who are not normally seen in daylight appearing from an eclectic mix of vehicles.  Being in rural France, the music started nearly an hour later than advertised, and the first act was Gertrude, a burlesque accordion artist, with a fine line in animal noises...  She performed for an hour.  Second up was the reason we were there - Bourbon, a Rory Gallagher tribute band, and while we aren't into Rory ourselves, we have a chum who is and leads the band.  But as we are no longer 25 years old, the fascination with semi-pro rural music faded, so we didn't make it through to the final act, Punkabilly band D-Track, which was a shame in some ways, as they play very jolly, infectious music. 

So that was Sunday.  Wednesday is always market day at la Flèche for me, but I don't expect to see trams passing the market.  I'm not sure where this one was heading to, but it certainly mucked up the traffic for a while in town!

I also did time this week finding hidden water cylinders and photographing their detail plates - two houses, two instances of the hot water cylinder being hidden and essentially blocked away for all identification and maintenance purposes!  How mad is that!  We are on our third hot water cylinder since buying our house, as with extremely hard water, they only seem to last about 10 years.

I'm not sharing photos of that sort of malarkey.

During the week, the fish in the lower pond seemed quite distressed - the water level is getting worrying in that pond.  Of course another reason for it seeming to be quite active, is that it is not the solitary specimen I thought it was - I counted at least four.  It was therefore something of a relief on Saturday that the level of water in the pond had risen and the fish were not to be seen.

Then yesterday was Vide Grenier at Echimiré day - very similar to a car boot, in that as a seller, you arrive very early and have to spend ages swatting people off, before you can get a display you are happy with.  For the organisers, they make their money on selling a variety of liquid and solid refreshments, so the early morning coffee was very welcome as was a glass of rosé wine and a punnet of chips at lunchtime.  For us, the aim is to reclaim space, so we were happy to see large items go, and only really dug our heels in on dropping prices when someone was pratting, around making out he couldn't understand my French.  As the lady on the next plot said to him, "she will start increasing the price if you carry on being rude - your wife understands very well!"  Anyway, we do another one in a few weeks and that is our lot for the year.  

Now we come to a question of time.  If I have time, I will prepare a couple of blogs to be published the next two Sundays, as I am away to the UK and won't have the technology to post anything.  Apologies if I don't get round to it however as all sorts of "stuff" seems to be cropping up this week.

 

 

 

 

 

All sorts of races

This week the inaugural edition of the Tour du Pays de la Loire was run, and Day 3 of the race started at Baugé en Anjou.  While it was a professional race, the teams were limited to 6 riders each, and the top names were saving themselves for this weekend's Paris-Roubaix, although I am sure many would give up the threat of the cobbles in the latter race for the joys of Anjou!  There was the usual Village Depart in town, but as parking would have been vile, I had just got my new orthopaedic insoles, and the Depart Fictif was coming through the village, we decided to watch it go through just up the road.  By quarter to midday, a small crowd of villagers had gathered in the Place d'Eglise to see it go past.  With the Tour de France, you get the media helicopters and a publicity caravan dishing out goodies.  With the Tour du Pays de la Loire, you get more official Tour motorbikes than seems feasible, plus loads of police outriders, until the actual competitors arrive.  Then after they go through, you have at least one car per team, plus ambulance, doctor, red lantern van (picks up stragglers) and a final van for anything that looks dodgy.  Here are the riders arriving in the village up the big hill (something to warm up the leg muscles).

We are in a race against time and the elements to get the potato bed ready for planting.  In theory the spuds go in on Good Friday, but weather and other people's lawns have made it difficult to get going on this.  Still yesterday John managed to get perhaps half the bed, or at least enough for 2 to 3 rows of potatoes to be planted if there is nothing else to do!

The trail camera is in the Garden at the moment.  In theory it was placed to see what is coming through the fence, prior to blocking off the hole, but we don't have any evidence of that.  We have plenty of wood pecker action (due a blog of its own), and have many fine shots of the massive rat that has a burrow in the garden.  We have also occasional shots of these two racing around - they never stay close to the camera for video footage, just stills.  I am pretty sure they are not rats (the tail is wrong where it exists), but otherwise I am not too sure.  It could be the pine martins that seem to live mainly over in the meadow, not least as one of those is minus a tail now, but I'm not totally convinced.

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Flowers and blossom have been a bit delayed this year compared to the last few, so the tulips are racing away to flower before it gets too hot.  The red ones are in their second year in a pot by the Shack kitchen, while the yellow ones (which were brought as white) were planted three years ago on the edge of one of the cultivated squares.  The square has moved it would seem as they are a way off it now!

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Of course not everything is rushing around (thankfully), and this week we have been able to taste the fruits of our labours in the form of harvesting 2 of our 6 cauliflowers.  These aren't the easiest vegetable to grow and are in the ground for ages - over 7 months in this case.  I think the only thing I can say about our success is that the wretched plants seem to favour being planted in near solid clay.  Anyway, here is a portrait of the one we are eating at the moment (half roasted yesterday, the rest raw today).

The Easter weekend is proving to be beautifully sunny and warm - well, at least until late tonight or early tomorrow when rain comes in.  We laboured long and hard in the potager yesterday, what with rotavating, planting onions, and clearing soil to sow mangetout peas, so we were both entitled to hammock time.  It was lovely lying there, looking up at the tiny new birch leaves opening above us.

Next Sunday we are selling "stuff" at a vide grenier, so the blog won't be written until the following day - it's not like the UK where a car boot is over by midday.  Here you set up at about 7:30am, and don't get to dismantle and go until gone 5:30pm, but which time I won't want to communicate with anything!!

 

Seaside Rendez-Vous

This weekend we had our first holiday together for four years, comprising a night away at Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie in the Vendée.  Once we had fed both sets of cats, and hidden food bowls around the house for the girls, we headed south west in search of pastures new, sea air, food not cooked by us and exercise.

Our first "holiday" stop was to admire the ruined castle at les Essarts, somewhat north of la Roche-sur-Yon.  it looked dramatic driving by, and has a lovely new carpark and an excellent boardwalk to the entrance, but won't be open until 7th April, so the boardwalk was as far as we got.

We then carried on to Saint Gilles itself, found a parking space near our hotel and before we checked in, went for a first exploratory wander.  The place is an amalgamation of a number of small communities along both banks of a river which takes a tortuous route to the sea.  We were on the far side, so to speak, but there was actually a further side beyond the river Vie, which we went to today.  Without a map it was horribly confusing, and as we were outside the tourist season, we had to wait until we checked into the hotel to get our hands on a town plan and make sense of it all.  Anyway, we walked out along the river towards the sea, taking a few photos on the way.

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We then checked into the hotel, let my feet recover from a lot of walking, and studied the map carefully, before changing for dinner.  We then set out inland back over the second loop of the river, and as the weather was pretty filthy, chose the first open restaurant we came to for our dinner, which was very good.  I forget how much I like Pineau de Charente as an aperitif!  We also forget how good the simple things in life are, like good bread and butter and tinned sardines (sardines are very much The Thing at Saint Gilles), which made a delicious starter.  After a very nice dinner, and once that rainstorm had blown over, we went back to the hotel, stopping only to photograph the rather dramatic church tower.

This morning was the fine weather before the storm, so we took advantage to walk up and down along the dune and Grand Plage that protect the entrance to the river Vie and the sailing and fishing ports behind.  In summer it must be vile, lined as it is with holiday apartments, candy floss shops, ice cream parlours and creperies, but firmly out of season and with a few brave cafés and restaurants open and a few mad kite surfers, it was what we needed.  The wind was blowing a gale, which made life interesting.  John had to screw his flat cap on his head to avoid it flying away more than once.  The amount of oxygen inhaled in any one breathe was intoxicating and my hair is still standing on end.

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Even though we were on holiday, we really couldn't resist this bit of interpretation about and curation of dune plants, vital for saving the Vendée coastline in all its natural splendour against the ravages of the sea.  The irony of it being next two blocks of recent and really rather ugly holiday flats seems to be totally lost on the French and local government.

The promised thunderstorm arrived a little after midday, but by that time, we were tucked up in the outer terrace (so protected from most of the elements but with a good view of them all) of a very nice restaurant having a lovely lunch and being aggressively flirted with by a waiter practicing his English before the holiday hoards descend.  We dashed to the car in a pause between rain showers, to head home to face the wrath of cats, feeling very well fed, well oxygenated and almost ready for the Spring.  Almost...

 

Truffle time

If you aren't interested in food, today's contribution is not for you!  

Every year, from early January and depending on prices and what is going on, John buys 100g of black truffle for me to "play" with.  He uses Ebay to find a supplier, and if we like their product, we stay faithful for a year or two.  The bloke that sent us a photo of the dog that found the truffles was a favourite for about 3 years I think!  Generally they come from the south west of France, although there are truffle woods around here and a truffle fair each year at Chinon.  This year we were a bit later than usual buying our black gold as I had a trip to the UK earlier in the month, but the parcel arrived on the 23rd of January with these gems.

The first thing I do is set some to infuse in cheese - this year's choice was a quarter of a Brillat Saverin, a mild cheese that we generally find fairly pointless, unless it is to take on truffle aroma.  I also mixed some pieces into cream cheese and sealed that in a yoghurt pot for a few days.

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The first meal was the classic - scrambled eggs with truffle shards sprinkled over them.  The scrambled eggs are a silly colour because our chickens produce dayglo yellow egg yolks.

The second meal was another classic - linguine with a cream sauce infused with cèpe and truffle flakes.  I added the smoked salmon as I had a slice that I had got from the fish monger before the truffles arrived and it needed to be used up.  Happily, it didn't overwhelm the sauce.

The Wednesday meal was fish based, as I had been to the market that morning - a nice piece of cod filet, pan fried, with a beurre blanc sauce and slices of truffle.  There were crudités to provide a hint of healthy bits too.

By the Thursday evening, the truffle infused cream cheese was just right for a dip with aperos before dinner.  I then topped up the pot with more cream cheese to get another go at it!

Thursday dinner was a sumptuous roast chicken leg served with truffle mash - one of the very few dishes where the truffle gets cooked as it is so well encased in mashed potato.

Friday we had a day off from truffle, but Saturday night was an interesting one.  My brother had given me a couple of merguez crepinettes - for those not in the know, merguez are a beef and/or lamb sausage well spiced with paprika, while a cripinette is a sort of flat sausage encased in crepine, or the membrane of an internal organ of a pig.  We had the other half of the truffle mash too, and were worried that the meat would be too strong for the mash, but they made an excellent mix.

Sunday lunch is normally eggs in some form after a morning of labour or leisure at The Shack.  For the truffle fest, I did baked eggs with truffle slices hidden under the eggs, so another of the few times the truffle actually gets cooked, but again trying to keep the aromas in with a coating of egg, cream and mild cheese.  It worked!

Sunday dinner was another classic - pan fried scallops with truffle.  To celebrate scallops, I dug up four leeks from The Garden and cooked them down with stock, before adding a swirl of cream and pepper to the final mix.  They made a wonderful bed and foil to the scallops - that was memorable!

On the Monday, as I was in Baugé, I stopped at the market and got a pork loin from the butcher.  This enabled me to do slices of pork loin with spaghetti and a cream and truffle sauce which was a particularly lush start to a new week.

The next lunchtime we finished off the truffle infused cheeses as the Brillat Saverin was starting to climb out of the cheese box - not in a smelly way, just getting jolly runny.

The week of truffle greed ended with the second half of the pork loin, cut into medallions and pan fried, and served with a rich mushroom risotto, all liberally festooned with the final slivers of truffle.

So there you have it - 8 days of truffle heaven, which won't be repeated in 2023, so roll on 2024!  I should also add that there is a real art to photographing food, which includes the right lighting and the food not being hot.  But scrub around that - I remembered to take a snap before wading into dinner and that is the most I can promise!

Next week there should be animal videos.

 

A spot of nostalgia and a highlight of village life returns

For various, boring, administrative reasons, I had to return to where I grew up - the Tunbridge Wells area of Kent.  I've not been there since perhaps 2006 at the most recent, so it was all a bit odd.  Somethings change enormously - the main topic of conversation on local chat sites was where the most recent potholes had appeared and how many cars had broken wheels or suspension or both as a result.  That really was rather scary!  Other things don't change or don't seem to anyway, as I found out on Wednesday.

My driver parked at the entrance to the Woods and we walked along the lane as far as an ancient oak and a kink in the road that for some reason my father always called London.  One of my bedroom windows is still the same old sash window I remember gazing out of for hours as a teenager, the porch on the cottage is still the one my Dad whittled over a couple of winters in front of the fire (I wonder if his fireplace with even more whittling is still there?), while the local post box is still the same and the amazing bronze stag door knocker on another house is as I remember, although the people who lived there are gone.  Some houses on one side of the road, the older houses, are being renovated, but on the other side of the road, up the hill from the road, the more modern houses are hidden by hedges that have grown taller and more impenetrable than I remember them.

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Another blast from the past was travelling as a foot passenger (last done in 1984 on the Harwich-Hamburg ferry), and using the Dieppe - Newhaven crossing, which I last used when I was perhaps 14.  The boat was more modern, but the crossing still lasts at least 4 hours, and as there was a gale in the Channel, it actually lasted more like 5 or 6 hours!  Travelling over to the UK, it was dark when I got on the boat so could see nothing, but coming back on a day crossing was rather splendid in the storm.  Near port, you could really see the waves crashing against the harbour walls, as well as admiring the Seven Sisters as we got further out.  Once away from the coast, the spectacle of a stormy sea was enjoyable, although 5 hours of waves can, after a while, get a bit dull!  I don't get sea sick fortunately.  Given the weather conditions, I couldn't get out on deck, so the photos are through slightly grubby windows.

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Back in France, every January, there is a ceremony in most communes of a presentation by the Mayor to wish the local population a Happy New Year, to share a review of the year that has passed and to set out the main projects and excitements for the year ahead.  In an election year, they have to be very careful what they say, and as all and any residents can attend, for the last two years there has been no event, just a video, which is not the same.  This year these ceremonies are back.  A major difference was that there was practically no kissing - normally these events are a marathon of cheek kissing and hand shaking, this year it was fist bumps, nods, smiles and acknowledgements.  Fingers crossed it wasn't a super spreader event! 

For something over an hour the high and low lights of the past year were shared, from the Mediaeval Fair to the great fire, with so many things in between, a presentation to a retiring member of the village school team, an outline of changes for 2023, including how we pay for rubbish collections, and the works being undertaken to restore some community woodland.  There was also a presentation on, and exhortation to get involved in, the Comice 2023, which will be in Vieil Baugé.  After, there was an opportunity to nobble a member of the council about undeclared building work going on, as well as to drink a glass of fizz, greet a number of friends and each cheese puffs.  It was great to be back to something like normal.

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So 2023 is now fully launched and things are back to near normal.  Have a good week!

 

New year, new promise?

Last blog was all about looking back, today is more about looking forward as the days start to lengthen and we stop thinking about how to celebrate midwinter and concentrate more on what the new year has to offer.

On the last day of the old year, it was unseasonably warm.  Now it is always hard for a gardener to hold back on sowing things and planting things, because that is what it is all about, making things grow.  That challenge is even harder when it is mild and you see buds developing and catkins shedding pollen everywhere (and so the start of the new season allergies).  However I felt justified in doing a bit of sowing, as I hadn't got around to the second patch of broad beans, and I like to do autumn sowing to avoid the worst ravages of blackfly.  So I uncovered a nicely clean bed, raked it over to remove any foolhardy weeds and a bit more of the underlying builders' rubble, made about 88 dents and sowed broad bean Aquadulce Claudia.  I then raked soil back over and added a nice long piece of netting to avoid the worst ravages of cat bottom.  I guess it will be another 3 weeks or so before the shoots show.

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Another major winter occupation is firewood - now is a good time to fell as the trees are quiet, not too much sap around or leaves to encumber the fall, we aren't worried about missing mushrooms and we aren't being attacked by mosquitos.  We've brought down two trees so far this winter and want to bring down another couple to ensure continuity.  We had clearly grown soft this summer as moving the dead/dry pieces up to the top of the One Acre Wood is proving harder work than in previous years and neither of us have really felt that our elbows are in a suitable condition for doing a lot of splitting with an axe, however satisfying it can be.  We borrowed a log splitter which made short work of the existing stash of big logs, which are now ready for use.

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We are still eating the fruits of last year's gardening, and the Brussel Sprouts seem to be nearly ready for John to crunch his way through.  I won't touch them.  Next weekend we will have our first red cabbage, but I fear that the cauliflower plants, that grew so large and lush, won't have the reserves to make good curds in February/March.  I mentioned that it was unseasonably warm?  Today I found them covered once again by caterpillars!

It is good at this time of year to look around and appreciate what we take for granted.  Two examples of this.  Firstly I was in a neighbouring village for a work appointment, and rather than park at the client's house, I parked by the church.  Once the work was done, as I put my stuff back in the car, and changed sweatshirt to one that the cats could and would dribble on, I took a moment to marvel at the magnificent St Médard church in Cheviré le Rouge.  It's not the largest village by any means, but perhaps 800 or 900 years ago it was way more important, and deserved this large and impressive church.

Looking down, once at the Orchard and having a bit of a walk, I marvelled at the intricate patterns of cyclamen leaves and was perhaps a bit concerned at the number and size of orchid rosettes under the big walnut tree.  The cyclamen flowers in the autumn were magnificent.  The orchids are most likely to be lizard orchids - impressive, particularly when there are a lot of them, but not pretty.

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I'm travelling next week, so there may be photos from other places next Sunday!

 

Never enough time!

It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks, with getting the draft report done for clients and then this week a presentation that could have gone a lot better, if IT had been on my side.  Then there was the house sale we were helping with, so last weekend was a flurry of moving "stuff", and in particular sofas, and the angst of returning the hire van full of diesel when the local petrol stations were empty!  The actual sale went swimmingly well in the end, so that was a relatively easy Monday - well until yoga, when the joints in my legs and feet really didn't want to play ball with various positions! 

Tuesday was taking a cat to her first vet visit in 10 years to be chipped and passported and vaccinated so she can go travelling.  I had had more nightmares about that than sofa moving or interpreting, and it turns out my subconscious was right, as she was a bit of a problem (other more pungent phrases are available).  In the end, we had to leave her with the vet to be sedated for the three required injections, and there is a prescription for tranquilizers for the return visit for the booster jab in a month's time.

Tomorrow, I head to the UK for over a week to do some evaluation work and see family and friends.  It should be fun, but I've still got loads of sorting, printing, ironing and packing to do before I am anywhere near ready to head off.  This is a long-winded excuse for not battling with YouTube to load the latest dollop of cute wild boar videos, but there are some photos!  If you are looking at this on a computer (and possibly a tablet), click on the photos to get the full joy and the right number of boar - the first one actually has 10 in it!

In In

In other news, we did get to the One Acre Wood over the weekend to see if there were any nice edible mushrooms, as this is supposed to be great weather for them.  Hmmm.  Well, I spotted the three below, but they were not numerous, not particularly edible, and not particularly inspiring either.  Perhaps it is just our bit of woodland, and we need to look about 300 kilometres further south?

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Some things are working as you would expect at this time of year - the badgers are doing some vital work on the summer love nest prior to moving back up to the main badger village a couple of fields away for winter.  All we see of their activity are the piles of bright soil added to the spoil heap around the entrance.  Other things are not as would be expected - the yukkas flower in April and May, not the second half of October!!

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So, a short missive this week and I won't be writing again until 1st November, but I hope to share with you some lovely photos from the Broads and Essex when I do write.

 

Piggie fun and other stuff

It's been a busy couple of weeks, with the report for the Marches Mosses BogLIFE last weekend and helping some people move out of their lovely maison secondaire this weekend, which included moving a lot of furniture, and not all of it ours.  We have had our much-loved DFS sofa and armchair for over 30 years, and while they started out stylish and comfortable, the sofa had become a lot less comfortable with time, while my beloved armchair was visually a thing of shame, if not horror when some of the innards splurged out.  The friends who are leaving had two smart small sofas and no desire to keep them and passed them to us.  My armchair went to the tip, but the sofa moved next door (!), and their sofa went to the tip as well.

We also have an embarrassment of storage units, shelving units, garden chairs and tables, extension cables and running blocks, chainsaws, rakes, spades, mowers, books, DVDs and bedding.  At least I know what I will do with the excess bedding...

Taking a breather from moving storage and shelving units around, we had a chat to the neighbour of the people moving out.  His garden is immaculate in general, although his front garden has too many gnomes and white stones for my taste.  There was a vine of some sort going along the fence and in passing I had tended to assume it was a form of bryony, but discussing it with him, it turns out I was completely wrong.  A tender but thug-like vine, the cristophine (or however it is spelt), is a semi-tropical or tropical savoury vegetable, which looks pear-shaped but knobbly, and tastes rather like salsify to my mind.   It makes a very nice gratin.  Here is a baby fruit, which was about 3 inches long.

We moved the trail camera to nearer where the boar were finding food, and frankly it was a bit of a disaster.  The camera was normally upright for at most 12 hours before they bashed it over, looking for food.  Instead, we strapped the camera to a suitable tree and a bit higher up than normal too and waited to see what we caught.  I had hoped that there might be some badger action, but I think they stay out of the way of the boar.  The following five videos were over the last week, with three during daylight hours and two at night.  It is a sizeable family group, with two parents, possibly a couple of young from the previous litter and smaller ones from this year's litter.  First the night time marauding, then the daytime playful ones - they seem to regard our orchard as a safe space - at least until the hunt come through the area (although they don't access "our" land).

The bright dots are eyes in the infrared light.

Daytime feeding is more amusing to watch.

And watching playtime, I am glad that this is as close as I ever get to a live one!

 

 

I'm hoping for a more tranquil week now, when I can concentrate on getting crops in and doing a lot of paperwork!

 

What a strange week!

Last Sunday the weather decided to break, with thunderstorms and rain, except around us.  I could see storms, but couldn't actually hear them, and we had little rain during the week despite the predictions for quantities of up to 20mm.  We had 5mm.  Not really enough to do anything other than make the air heavy and uncomfortable.  But then the temperatures went down, and I even wore a pair of jeans one day! 

The chimney is now swept, so we could have a fire, but the house is still very warm, so no need.  It got ever cooler so that on Friday, when visiting Chinon, I turned down the opportunity of a soft drink in the Place Jeanne d'Arc on the basis I didn't have a jumper with me.  Today I am back in shorts, and we expect temperatures of 30ºC and over for the next couple of days.  Crazy!  This storm was to the North of le Mans, 50km away!

The trail camera is starting to be accepted again by the local wildlife - it takes a while for them to get used to a lump of willow trunk sitting and looking threatening in their "zone".  There are some videos, but i don't think the bandwidth is there today to load them onto YouTube and share them.  In addition to the badger, deer and birds of last week, more deer have been spotted, and the pine martin is back.  A new addition to the local gang is a hare - the field next door was ploughed, and he/she seemed to object.

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Yesterday was the annual Méchoui or outdoor pig roast at our local Boule de Forte club, la Paix.  Covid meant that it couldn't run in 2020, as no large gatherings were allowed, while the rules were changing so often in 2021, the organisers wisely decided not to bother.  This year, with no restrictions, it was back. 

While for the organisers, it starts early on a Saturday morning, getting the pig cooking, for us punters, things kick off from about midday with a long drinks and nibbles session, before we are called to table for more drinks and nibbles.  Then there is a collation of cold salad starters with bread (at which point the chaps buy wine and water), and by about 3:30pm, people are starting to get restive, so six chaps will carry the pig over to the carving table and serve it up.  Platters of hot pork, bowls of beans and bowls of ratatouille then do the rounds, and there are always seconds.  There can be a bit of a scrum for good bits of skin and crackling, but I did well on that this year.  Then when you feel you couldn't eat or drink another thing, cheese and slices of apple tart arrive, followed by coffee. 

We dragged our sagging tummies home at 6:30pm, as our brains were ringing with French, including heartfelt condolences from French friends who had been thinking about us, they assured us, constantly since Thursday evening.  The warmth of community feeling is a wonderful thing.

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So yes, that's the final aspect to a strange week - Thursday 8th September, at 7:33pm the France 3 news was interrupted in its first story by the breaking news that Queen Elizabeth II had died.  By the time we turned over to France 2 for the detailed weather forecast including the Caribbean islands, their 8 o'clock news had started early, with presenters wearing black, doing a four-hour special on Her Majesty.  Their coverage was sad but also celebratory.  They managed to find a couple of British, but fluent French speakers from their staff to make some sort of serious comment, while National Treasure, Stéphane Bearne (OBE) was wheeled out to talk about the several times he met the Queen, including for his investiture.  It was an excellent homage to a great lady. 

While flags were lowered on Friday in many places, and any news programme or channel is a bit obsessed by it all, we can turn over and watch other things.  We can also change channel on the internet radio and go from mournful or reflective music on Classic FM and Radio 2, to jollier tunes and normal voices on French radio stations.  Come the 19th September, I guess we will be glued to a news channel though - after all, it is history in the making.

But now I must go and make peach jam, because over-ripe peaches wait for nothing and no one!