Rural Life

Welcome to Autumn

Meteorological autumn started on the 1st September and autumness is being embraced by fauna, flora and weather with unseemly eagerness.  Temperatures are dropping, and the weather lurches from dismal to awful, with quick hints of sun in between.  Yesterday we were due storms in the afternoon, but needed to spend a few money off vouchers, so didn't get to the place in the country until the rain had started, while thunder rumbled around.  We were lucky, actually, to be there and not at home, where there were strong wind squalls, nearly three times the amount of rain, and hail.  While the barn cats munched their way through their feed, oblivious to the weather, I watched the rain and then checked the lightning strike web page.

There's not much by way of mellow fruitfulness about either.  The berries are rotting on the canes almost before they ripen and the pears are over - not enough for a burping barrel either!  There are apples - the Reine de Reinettes are falling and are quite tasty.  I need to burrow into the Bel de Boskoop to find any there, while the Granny Smiths will hold for ages.  The Canada juicing apples are rotting, then falling, so I fear for the trees if the marauding boar decide they like cider.  We had hoped for a single variety juice pressing this year, but if we do one at all, I think it will be mixed.  The quince are also a disappointment, as they have missed out on the heat and sunshine they need to develop to their full size and become fragrant.  They are falling!  I will have to try to make jelly, but I don't think they will be up to tagine or slow cooked quince standard sadly.  

Also in stark contrast to last year, we can only spot 5 fruits on the cristophine vine, despite it being even bigger than last year!  It also misses the heat and sunshine though it does enjoy a good deluge.

The cyclamen in the lawn have been later to flower than normal - about 3 weeks later if I recall correctly.  I had hoped that the delay might at least mean a full carpet of them around the birch tree.  I may be jaded and depressed with this year, but it seems to me that they too are less bountiful, although new corms have started to produce flowers in far flung areas of the garden.

We are hoping for a decent year for mushrooms, with all the water that there is around.  A walk around the One Acre Wood today showed that there are things popping up, but not interesting edible things so far.

We have found a first bolete, but not where it should be.  There was one growing in the lettuce bed, which I picked, but as there is no oak or chestnut in the Garden area, just a rather large birch tree, I did not risk cooking it.  It could well have been fine, but when picking wild mushrooms, any doubt at all and it goes on the compost heap.

The Marx Sisters have settled in well, and at least two of them have started to lay rather cute small eggs.  Groucho is a greedy so and so and likes to climb into trees and onto tables.  This can be disconcerting.  Harpo bumbles on in her own happy way, and seems to have been the one to come into lay first.  Chico is a bit more of a loner and likes to fly.  Specifically, she likes to fly at my back when I am walking away from her, which is a bit worrying.  Perhaps in a former life, she was an eagle.

I have had another major session with my new strimmer, using the brushcutter head this time, and have a number of projects with that.  More to follow in the coming weeks.  I also probably ought to shuffle the trail cameras around, so again something for another week.

Until next time!

 

Summer ends with a splash!

Friday evening's pub session was grey, cool (I was wearing a sweatshirt, for goodness sake), and distinctly humid.  Saturday morning we woke to a thunderstorm and heavy rain - some 20mm before 11am.  But as so often with summer storms, but midday, the sun was out and temperatures rocketed and we were able to sit out for aperos in the garden and say how lovely it all was.  So at 3:30am, we were unimpressed to be woken with a shock by loud thunder nearly overhead and positively biblical rain, which carried on for a good hour.

I am always surprised after such a violent sounding night, how in the morning, you have to look really hard to find the evidence of the cataclysm that seemed to be going on during the hours of darkness.  Yes, the rain gauge was pretty full, and the one at The Garden was nearly overflowing, and driving to The Garden, there were odd banks of sand by some of the fields, but nothing particularly broken, just a lot more water in the ponds.

It is sad that summer ends so abruptly, not least as we are still in Comice season, and Genneteil were doing the honours this year for the Noyant Villages area.  Still by the time they got to the procession of villages (no fancy floats this year from the Noyant area), the sun was doing its best to shine on them.  I do feel that this year's procession was a demonstration of cruelty to Renault 4s and as I used to drive one, I felt a lot of sympathy for this poor car, pulling a trailer that was too well loaded for the weight of the car.

For an event where the theme was Rock and Retro, I also felt that the non-marching band weren't quite in the swing of the theme by playing Lady Gaga's Poker Face.  But perhaps it is the highlight of their repertoire.

Autumn jobs are coming to the forefront of our thinking.  The Meadow needs to be fully mown and the side paths need to be cleared so that I can get into the little woodland at the end and finally see what is down there.  The Orchard is too overgrown and needs to be sorted out before the walnuts start to fall - not least as walnuts are our rent to the landlady.  So, lots to do, and possibly too much for one man. 

So I rummaged in my moth filled wallet and invested in a strimmer/brushcutter that I can use.  My elbow has ceased to support frequent use of a pullcord for starting a petrol engine, so I have gone for a battery model and used it for the first time yesterday.  The battery lasted longer than I did, which bodes well for later in the autumn.  Me in safety gear, harness and carrying said strimmer is not a good look, but better safe than sorry!

Last Sunday, in a last hurrah to summer, we attended a jazz manouche concert at our local pub - Les Epines de Mymi Rose.  I've wanted to catch one of her concerts for a while, so was delighted to spend a warm summer evening, sitting with a glass of wine. listening to an excellent performance.

One of the delights of autumn here are vivid sunsets, so this from Wednesday night may well be the first of many.  There is much that is autumnal around at the moment, with the giant orange jelly slugs, ripe fruit falling and a certain feel to the air.  I am very fond of early autumn, but not so much this year, as we never seem to have had much of a summer.  Perhaps a week or so in August.

I did mention giant orange jelly slugs - they are numerous and finding life just too, too wonderful at the moment.  Wandering around the One Acre Wood I nearly stopped slug sex but standing on two, but managed to sidestep them just in time.  Fascinating and disgusting at the same time!

Have a good week!

 

Looking back at the Comice last weekend

Last week's blog was a teaser about the float I have been working with others from the village for last week's Comice.  The Saturday was wet, so I was glad that it was still in the hangar where we store it, and Sunday dawned fair but cool for the drive to Vaulandry and for the procession itself.  I wasn't with it when it headed off, so I didn't see the roof flapping, as while it was fine at walking pace, the more sprightly 20kmph on the open road, compounded by a gap where the door panel would go, was too much for it.  There was a stop to strap it all together and a message to me to bring staples and means of fixing - like I wasn't going to bring that sort of stuff anyway!

This photo shows as many of the contributors to the float as we could track down once the procession was done!

I found the float at about midday and spent a happy hour adding all the bits that wouldn't travel well, getting the roof secure and putting on the door panel.  Then I set up the cauldron and fire, placed the furniture and all was ready. 

The staging area for the floats is always a nice place to be.  People putting the final touches together, getting dressed up, having lunch and preparing for the afternoon. 

As ever, the procession was late setting off, and took its time too, and being with our float, I didn't capture all of the others well, and totally missed the performance by one lot, while being subjected to the same inane song about Little Red Riding Hood (the float behind ours) nearly 50 times!

The theme of the Comice was the Call of the Forest, and all floats were linked to that, some more closely than others.  Next year the Comice will be at Fougeré, so they were ahead  of us, with their take on the magic of the forest and a giant druid.

After us was Pontigné, Little Red Riding Hood, that blasted music and a Wolf that made a few small children cry and behaved generally very badly - but only when he had his wolf's mask on.

Other aspects of the forest included Echimiré and their dolmen, le Guedenieu and their dominial forest, Cuon looking at the seasons on one tree, and St Martin d'Arcé had an Ent.  Vaulandry had a float showing woodland crafts, while Cheviré le Rouge went all out and depicted the Call of the Bois de Boulogne (Paris) complete with police van, gendarmes, pimp and some really dodgy prostitutes.

We distributed about 4 kilos of sweets while walking with our float, mostly to children, but volunteers, first aid teams and local mayors were very grateful for a sweetie too.  In case you haven't worked it out, ours was Hansel and Gretel, the Witch and the Gingerbread House in the forest.

To give you an idea of what a procession of floats looks like, here we are, going around the exhibition of agricultural machinery and services!

Every Comice has to have outdoor catering at some stage.  Last year we had something like 20 whole pigs spit roasting over firepits.  This year the Sunday night feast was steak, but you could still have a lovely big bonfire in order to have enough glowing embers for cooking 1,200 steaks.

We didn't stay for the late night entertainment but we did stop and enjoy a local band entertaining the masses, with a slightly weird mix of accordion, tuba, voice and guitar.  It was rather good and we bought the CD, and one of these days I will listen to it too! 

So that was the Comice 2024 and we have a bit of a rest now before starting work in January on the float for 2025, when it will be the 150th Comice of Baugé en Anjou!

Monday we were back down to earth with a bump, with a funeral, the weather turned about 3 times in the week, and today is beautiful but distinctly autumnal, which is unfair as summer only seems to have started about three weeks ago!  However there is live music at the village pub tonight, so I must get on with making supper so we can eat before we go out.  I leave you with a rather fine photo of a small wasp having a go at pollinating the first of the cristophine flowers for this year.

Have a good week!

 

 

A hint of what is to come!

By the time this gets published, our village float for the Comice at Vaulandry will be over at Vaulandry and I will be doing the final touches to it.  There are giant boiled sweets to be added along the sides, the door panel of the witch's gingerbread house to fix and the full glory of the bamboo trees to open out.  I will also likely have to reattach a number of flowers, before setting up the witch's cauldron and chair.  It's all go!

The full story of the parade of decorated floats may well not be published until next weekend.

 

Dog days of August

Interestingly (well I think it is interesting anyway), the French word for heatwave is canicule, from the Latin canus and something else, but implying our dog days of high summer.  Anyway, we are slap bang in the middle of another bout of high heat, which is quite restricting.  This morning we thought we might go to the Festival of the Giant Croissant - it is an annual thing around here.  I thought I might have written about it one year, but looking back, I haven't.  The giant croissants are over a foot long and would feed a family of four for two breakfasts.  I digress - everyone seemed to have the same idea and with a wait of 15 minutes to get into a car park, a couple of hours slogging around a hot village surrounded by fragrant and sweaty people lost all appeal.  We diverted to see the cats in the country and slop a bit of water around new crops and came home.  When I checked the Weather App, this is what I was promised.

While the sun is at its most intense at midday, the hottest time of the day is generally between 5pm and 7pm, by which time it was due to be about 35ºC.  We have decided to spend the day defrosting the small freezer instead.

With hot periods like this, there isn't much you can do really.  You have to go with the flow and try to keep as cool as possible (it is only 29ºC in my office currently).  This week we did decide to try out a new restaurant nearby.  The Bistrot 1813 has only been open perhaps 3 months, and is doing well, although from adverts on social media, when the schools and colleges go back, they could be struggling for waiting and kitchen staff.  We had a very enjoyable lunch there - 16,90€ a head for three courses, plus drinks on top (a very good Côtes de Rhône by the glass - not cheap, but if you are only having one glass, make it a good one!).  Fontaine Guerin is just down the road from us and has a church with a twisted spire - there are a few of them around here!

Yesterday morning was overcast and sticky.  Sunny and 36ºC is distinctly unpleasant but 28ºC and muggy is possibly worse.  To make the small and bijou market at Baugé that much more pleasant, there is often musical entertainment.  Some can be a bit trying - some Frenchman trying to croon "It's now or never" and imitating Elvis is the nadir, but recently there was a trad jazz clarinettist who was fab.  Yesterday we had a couple on guitar and fiddle doing Celtic sea shanty type music which was enchanting.  I hope they come again.

Rebus is no longer officially a kitten, he is now a cat.  He thinks this is a bit unfair, but once you hit one year old, you are a grown up in cat world.  But as he is now considered a cat, he has adopted one of the best loved cat perches around our garden.  Not our gutter, but definitely our cat!

He is well camouflaged in there!

The Marx Sisters have taken to garden life well and Harpo has started to lay eggs, but Chico and Groucho are being threatened with being part of the poule au pot served by the village at Telethon time.  I don't really need 3 freeloading chickens!  

We are in the final countdown to the Comice, at Vaulandry this year.  The last time it was there was 2011 and it was very hot (bit of a theme there).  On the Saturday a bunch of us performed Old MacDonald a une Ferme - there are photos here but fortunately no video!  Reading through the rest of the story, Pauline is now in the caring profession, Florian is married with one child, and Valentin has a degree in Engineering - how things move on!  The second day was the usual mayors' ploughing match and parade of floats, as is shown here.  I had nothing to do with the lovely float for le Vieil Baugé, which paid homage to the village's past as a wine producing area.

I've just heard a noise like a large lump of ice falling off the freezer, so I must go and tend to the ice removal process, which will be nice and cool - have I mentioned that it is 29ºC around my computer?  Have a good week!

 

 

 

Summer miscellany

Yes, summer is firmly installed now, and finally the verges are taking on their straw colour that I normally associate with July.  It arrived in a rush, with last Saturday starting to look promising, and last Sunday was as perfect a summer day as you could ask for.  But it didn't know when to stop, and Monday was hotter, which made visiting a chum in hospital more appealing as they had air conditioning.  Tuesday was deeply unpleasant - up to 39ºC measured in the shade in the garden, but with humidity, feeling a lot worse, and since then things have slowly calmed down to normal high summer.

On Monday, to finally welcome in summer, we got most of the cover on the gazebo in the garden.  First I had to check all the fixings and resew a number of the tapes, as they had been buffeted rather in the winds last autumn.  It is easiest to use my sewing machine outdoors, where the light is good and the table doesn't have a slippery surface.  Poirot, the elderly cat, decided I needed help and supervision - fortunately it didn't make life too difficult!

We have started on the annual mow of the wildflower meadow (royal we).  There is never an ideal time to do it, and currently it is a sea of white umbellifers, mostly wild carrot I think, but there are few butterflies, and the crickets seem to get out of the way OK, and if we leave it too long, the brambles and old man's beard and tiny saplings get more difficult to pulverise.  Seeds of things like orchids and broomrape are now ripe so will be spread around in the mowing process.

A favourite flower is gaura, and this year, after it had been well and truly strimmed down to ground level, it has come back with a glorious display for us.  I guess this could be the answer for how to keep it lovely!

I have been through the files on the trail camera that was overlooking one of the ponds.  It wasn't the best placement, and it overlooked a path going across so you get lots of photos and videos of animal bottoms disappearing out of shot.  This short video of a meandering doe is a rarity, and she doesn't stay around that long either!

Perhaps a day after the camera was set up, a stag took an interest in it, and had a good go and dismantling it, but failed.

The main purpose of the camera placement was to catch the boar having mud baths.  They leave an imprint in the mud that is impressive, so I hoped to capture something interesting.  One night I thought I might be in luck.  A boar arrives.

It gets itself into position, after a bit of preparation.

But is then too far away from the trail camera to set it off again, until bath time is over anyway, at which point I get an image of a muddy boar!  There is evidence of the boar bath place in the mud of the pond of course.

I would show you that, and the boar after its bath, but the internet is so slow and intermittent, I need perhaps 20 goes to get a photo loaded up, so I am calling it a day.  Enjoy your week!

 

 

It's all about weather, and the Olympics

After years of planning and months of the Olympic Torch passing through as much of France as possible, and people trying to get enthused about it all, last week it started!  Opinions are divided over the opening ceremony, ranging from censorship, through moans about it being boring and taking too long, being bitty and strange, to out and out adoration.  It seems to depend on how well you know French history and culture and whether you can be bothered to dredge your memory for interminable teams with flags parading into tight capacity Olympic stadia in previous iterations.

I can see both sides - from my academic and intellectual perspective, it was an interesting take on how to parade sportspeople from over 200 nations into a holding area where they can observe the Olympic oath being taken by representatives.  The logistics are always challenging, so to take to the water adds another dimension and a different way of doing it.  I suspect Los Angeles won't try to imitate that!  On the detail of some of the tableau, well, if you don't know French history or popular culture, many things will go over your head and the always quirky Philippe Katerine may well be a long way outside your comfort zone.

Some have said it was too inclusive - but working to the French moto of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, I don't think you can overdo the inclusiveness, including a 100 year old Olympic Gold medal holder being the third last link in the torch relay.  There were moments that had me teared up (French boat going under the bridge), or held in wonder (the horse charging up the Seine), or just downright proud to live in France (the light show around the Tour Eiffel), but people will never agree.  I liked it, you may not have done, but as always I found something else to do while the teams were on the move.

I've not included a picture - there are many in the public domain.

In the run up to Friday, all the discussion was about the weather - would it stay dry?  Would the front pass through beforehand?  Would it just be a bit of cloud and the odd drop of rain?  At no time did the forecasters say, "It will pee it down like you haven't seen in Paris in July without thunder for years".  O well!  The week was so mixed with hot sun on Wednesday and Thursday, and now again on Sunday.  It just goes to show you can't rely on the weather behaving itself.  But today things are looking lovely.

The sky last evening did actually presage a change in weather, with a wonderful, luminous pink effect across high clouds heading away to the east.  Today is the transition from something akin to October to high summer, which is due to last three or four days I gather!

Yesterday I dug up a load of potatoes for the week - they are looking good, but aren't really interesting to photograph.  While I worked I was whistled at a lot by a golden oriole, so I replied, imitating its call.  We kept up our conversation for a good quarter of an hour - I wonder what we said!

A final item from yesterday, was that the usual Saturday market in Baugé was augmented by the monthly display of classic, vintage and collectable cars and vans.  Some are quite magnificent, while others make me feel old as they were normal when I was growing up.  To add to the display this month, they brought along entertainment - a clarinettist playing jazz standards to a backing track.  He was very good and it was a delight.  I hope he comes back again soon!

Anyway, for a Sunday, we have a very busy end of the day (annoying as I would quite like to vegetate in front of the TV watching the cross country bit of the Olympic 3 day event from Versailles, but they keep cutting away to basketball or table tennis, so I guess I'm not missing much).  I had better go and do "stuff", and wish you a good week!

 

The day after the night before!

Yes, I'm feeling a bit muzzy today, after quite a day or two.  In part it is because the heat ramped up again very quickly, which seems to knock my system a bit.  Jumping up 5 degrees in a day, then dropping back down again a couple of days later means I don't get to acclimatise to the heat.  But in the main, it is because after a few years' gap, the Vieil Baugé Journée Champêtre is back and was yesterday. 

To be honest, I wasn't too involved this year, but John had to be up and away early yesterday morning for setting up the site, so I wasn't able to sleep in.  Then I was on the food line for about 3 and a half hours, not arduous but standing up all the time, which doesn't help my feet or knees.  Then there was getting to eat my meal, drink my drink, see the fireworks and drift home to sort out chickens and cats and wind down from a very French experience (it still mangles my brain, particularly if I am mixing French and English during an event).  So late to bed, and in a house that had got too hot during the day.  Muzzy really does cover it!

Still, it was a success and people enjoyed it and it is good to get village traditions back.  Here are a few photos, but Maryline Margas has posted a slide show of much better ones on Facebook. 

We were threatened with thunderstorms for yesterday - which fortunately for us didn't materialise.  The threat did galvanise me into lifting the yellow onions before they got too wet.  I was pleased with the size of them, but a strange phenomenon was that quite a few sets produced two onions.  I only planted single sets at each point, but about six did this, which I have never seen before.

In my muzzy state this morning, I was in the right frame of mind to sit and watch butterflies on the buddleia.  To be honest I would have liked to have seen more, but it might not have been the best conditions for them, although there were a lot of bees getting nectar for the hives, which has to be good.  There was this rather nice Comma butterfly - you can't see the comma, as that is on the underside of its wings, and he clearly wanted to soak up the sun.

Some of the high summer flowers are now coming into their own.  The crocosmia is rather swamped by surrounding weeds but the flowers are magnificent.  The statement white lily type thing in the garden tubs is starting to look particularly fine.  And then there are the canna lilies - these are all from three bulbs or sets John bought about 15 years ago, and have since gone mad, been removed from places and chucked on heaps or left on top of the soil to be eaten, only to colonise, and get very big indeed.  I love them when they are like this, big, brash and blousy.

So that is it, for this week.  Next week I hope to have sorted out some wildlife photos and video.  For those who watched the snake videos, I think I know where one of them lives, and I found that quite disturbing...

 

A lot going on

As I did my last blog early, this is the first one since both election results are known.  While there seems to be a wind of change in the UK, and likely for the better, or as much as can be done for the better with no funding, here in France we face stagnation and insecurity until people grow up and learn to play nicely together.  With the sane elements refusing to work with far right or far left, both of whom are chucking teddies out of prams and saying it is all unfair, we could have a long wait - in any case until September, when they might remember what the tax payers pay them for.  Of course I gather Belgium runs rather well when there is no one in charge and that could be the same here!

At the local level, things are challenging but for different reasons.  So far in July we have had 61mm rain - which is more than we usually get in the whole month.  This is actually quite good for some of the flowers, which are lasting longer in the cooler, wetter conditions.  While there aren't as many flowers as usual on my agapanthus, I have been enjoying them now for a week and they look like they will last longer too.

My "black" day lilies are looking rather magnificent too, while the star gazer in the background is lasting well as well, so it's not all bad.

The garlic crop is something of a disaster.  I planted the first lot of cloves not long after the shortest day (the traditional garlic planting day) and harvested them yesterday, so well after the shortest day, but the best are the size of marbles and others are smaller.  We did have one as part of yesterday's dinner, and it was very tasty, but it took ages to peel all 12 cloves, each the size of a grain of rice.  The shallots will be fine for pickling, but not much else sadly.

The onions are a different story.  I lifted the red ones yesterday, as the tops had mostly collapsed and the ground is very wet, so best not to let them sit and fester.  Normally the best I get is about the size of a pingpong ball, but this year there are several that are much more meaty.  The white onions will need to be lifted in a week or so, and they are looking even better.

I've also been lifting the first row of potatoes I planted - they are second earlies so ready to start eating now, and with the damp conditions I am getting a smidge paranoid about blight setting in.  I was particularly pleased with today's haul from one plant, which will provide three meals for us this week I think.

While I was away, Jack the Ripper shuffled off this mortal coil and went to the chicken run in the sky.  That is the second one this year, but not surprising as they have a limited life span and we haven't restocked for a while.  As we were down to one laying hen, (Mac the Knife), (the freeloading bantam and Auntie Mo the retired sponger not doing anything useful other than eating slugs and annoying the cats) I was given permission to acquire three new hens.  We were a bit late to the market, so I didn't have much choice, but I got the last speckled hen and two brown ones, one of which is darker than the other so I might tell them apart.  There was a white one, but I only spotted her when my three were removed as she was happy to be sat on by all the others.  I don't think that is a good sign, certainly not when they have to co-exist with cats.  So anyway, I carried home a cardboard box filled with the Marx sisters - Groucho the speckled, Chico the dark and Harpo the pale.

They should start laying in about three weeks or so, and for the moment seem to be behaving themselves.  Rebus the kitten has taken it upon himself to keep a very good eye on them, and make sure they don't to anything too stupid.  The other residents of the chicken run regard them with horror most of the time.

Today is the Fête Nationale (never Bastille Day), and to honour that, the Tour de France is making the cyclists go up a very steep mountain to finish today's stage in the Pyrenees.  It seems only fair that I go and watch them suffer for my entertainment and celebrate all things French.

Have a good week!
 

A trip to the old country

It was 14 months since my last visit to the UK, specifically England, and I really hadn't missed anything very much.  Not the vile state of the roads and always being on the look out for potholes, not the traffic jams, nor the non-traffic jams to the British, which were for me a nightmare as well, not the prices, nor really most of the things on the supermarket shelves.  Favourite shops had gone, cashpoint machines were hard to find, while talcum powder and Caramac were gone it seemed! 

But what I had missed, and what I was able to stock up on was time with friends.  The joy of chatting into the night with people I have known for over 30 years in some cases, was immense.  Catching up with old friends and making a few new ones is time well spent.  Even time with my accountant, who I have worked with for 20 years, was great, and nice to be greeted with a hug and a kiss too!  A highlight of my first evening, which was up in the West Midlands, was going out for an Indian meal "just round the corner" - yes, somewhere we could walk to after a civilised G&T in their garden!  I was particularly impressed by the pickle tray that arrived with the poppadoms.

The following day, there was a depressing visit to my old home town, Worcester, before an even more depressing 3 hours on the M25, but when you get to East Sussex and a view like this over green fields, it makes up for it!

The next day was London and the primary reason for my visit.  I will write in more detail about the show in my other blog, but suffice it to say that while there was no publicity beforehand, on Friday 28 June, the Tate finally launched this page about a fascinating exhibition.

From the Tate, a relatively short taxi ride took my brother and me to The George at Southwark for a restorative drink and light lunch.  I follow The Gentle Author, who writes mainly about east London, and frequently has engravings and old photos of coaching inns from the past, so walking into their courtyard was for me like walking into a piece of the Bishopsgate Institute picture library.

Once appetites had been dealt with, it was a short walk to London Bridge station for a train back to the relative civilisation of Kent.  The Shard dominates that area of London now, but the Station itself has a nice bit of modern art for those looking up rather than at their smart phones.

Tonbridge High Street is as unlovely as I remember it from my childhood, but does at least have a branch of Poundland (other similar brands are available).  They didn't have any of the final bars of Caramac available to purchase - a truly sad moment for me!  There are a couple of points of interest however - Tonbridge Castle and also The Chequers Inn with its noose where Wat Tyler's brother was hanged many years ago.  The Chequers is of course named for the tree, also known as Common Service, which has berries that can be used for brewing beer if other, more palatable, ingredients are not available.

Saturday was spent travelling, arriving home in the early hours of Sunday, I was fit for little more than hammock time during the day, before the shock, or rather shocking, results of the first round of French parliamentary elections.  The second round is this Sunday, and I fear I will need to write a blog to explain how that all pans out after that.

And no, that isn't me in the hammock being tended to by Spooky Cat.  I have a hammock chair which I find bizarrely comfortable, and was wallowing in that instead.

This blog is being written in advance, as we are being social this weekend, and I won't have time to wrestle with the internet.  By the time you read this, the UK election results will be out, and France will be voting.  Enjoy what you can!