Here at the palazzo de Ruch, the marble columns thought to be the work of the renaissance artist Giuseppe del Woerbleingio, admittedly a trifle naive from his early works and before he’d mastered actual carving, were guarded night and day by members of the Swiss guard ( admittedly a smaller outfit than the more well known group who guard his holiness at the Kremlin), they’re a dour bunch to be honest and sometimes when I look at the pizza covered doublets and rusty breastplates I wonder whether their heart is really in it.
Anyway after a few words with Charles and Frederick I was convinced by their argument to wit the pursuit of Alphonse for the mass slaughter of woodpidgeon, seems it’s fairly common in these parts no matter what your picture is, Alphonse is thinking pies. How is this to be reconciled? The personal appeal hasn’t worked, perhaps a resolution from the UN – probably not going to cut the proverbiale, a pithy note through the letterbox? I admit it seems useless, maybe I should take a deep breath and recognise that his culture of downing things for the pot is just as legit’ as mine even if different.

The day’s winding down now – a day of rest that seems to have been anything but restful but full of psychological and philosophical conjecture and debate.

Is it better to fight or fill a glass, should live and let live be carried as far as happy rats, do the lights on the green always turn a shade of purple in the autumn or is that merely stomach trouble. Who can say, who can say.

A taxi when you’re ready Marcel.

Toddlepip, tiddlypong and fair isle jumpers all belong to that class of things that were consigned to history thanks to the adoption of the interweb. It is now very simple to debunk these things as transitory or even illusionary. Many have said that many of our great states people of the past never really existed but thankfully we have a resource that can definitively squash such comment and innuendo.

The clog wearing rats of Ruch – debunked after an exhaustive investigation on a Sunday afternoon amongst the pyracantha .
Alphonse’s woodpidgeon haul, confirmed by photographic evidence and published the the Ruch times.
Mr Cedric’s inability to notice anything due to the proximity of a large stick, confirmed personally in the back garden without the need of the interweb.

I know it seems obvious to the young people among us that the fair isle jumper never really existed, like the nylon jogging suit or Draylon trousers but can I say this: tisch! Your time will come when all will become conjecture and myth and rumour.

In the days when we still harboured thoughts of the magical, before Bishops, Doctors of science and the sliced loaf, easier, slower times, I slept more soundly in my sheets thinking of scratchy jumpers and self lighting trousers. My Mum would read me a story all about Mr Chump the prime ministers dog and his adventures in Europe and closing the book a few seconds later I could slide down the nylon sheets inducing ten degree burns ( all before health and safety of course).
Now what have we got: Duvets, central heating and politicians – it’s no way to carry on.

Marcel, a pint of the green stuff if you’d be so kind.

Having moved to my third option for seating I can tell you I know have a completely different viewpoint. I think it must have been the drink that made me think in such mundane ways, you know slowing the wits and muddying the senses.
Well I can tell you it’s black coffee for me from now on and no mistake. There’ll be no alcohol in this house this week, I’ll will be putting my thumb down, girding my lunches and stepping out in style on the highway of righteousness, pass the pledge over hear I’ve got a pencil and I’m willing to chew it.

I think that the happy rats of Ruch probably wear clogs. Don’t quote me I’ve not physically seen it to confirm but as soon as I do I’ll be getting the pictures sorted. Leastways there’s something in the undergrowth that’s making an enormous amount of noise.

You can laugh and make with the sensible if you like ‘where would a rat get clogs?’ I hear you ask. ‘It’s a bird flitting about in the branches after the autumn berries’ you may coo.

It’s not a woodpidgeon I can tell you that, if they’re not in Alphonses bag they’ve taken to the allied underground to escape the bombardment, and as for where would a rat get clogs, from the local shop of course. I’ve seen those little clogs on the presentation shelf and they wouldn’t fit me I can tell you.

In fact it’s not that long ago that a slight aquaintance of ours let slip that they had trumpets at the bottom of the garden, the little buggers were marching about creating havoc with the woodwork and making huge pillars where millions could live at any one time. Can you imagine the racket, a voluntary every few minutes of the night must have been ghastly for him. He got the conductor in obviously, thank god for pest control.

Keep that coffee coming Marcel.

A pint of Synethsesia for me … and a pint of crème de menthe for my mate ( if it’s good enough for Hercule it’s good enough for us commoners)

You know a lot of people think in pictures, politicians all think in pictures, ‘what do I think it should look like? What do I need to do to get the picture’ easy peasy. Well it would be if the world did not work in the abstract or at least in multiple layers, everything touches everything else someone will always be upset and the rule of one counts (sorry Spock, but it just does).

I said this only this morning to Alphonse as he was shooting another woodpidgeon.

‘Put yourself in its’ claws’ I said, ‘ I think you’ll find that it would rather start the new season with the chance of a visionary new relationship between preditor and game, imagines the picture as bird and vulture head out into the sunset wing in wing’.

Now it could be that this did not really come over well due to my appalling French but I like to think that I’d dropped a small acorn into the pool of Alphonses thought, so to speak. Anyway after he reloaded and another woodpidgeon headed for the rotisserie I tried again.
‘think of it as a colour that will never be seen again, an aquamarine tinged with a sunsets amber bloom, something with the taste of a great camanbert laced with the tears of a thousand angels’.
This time I thought I’d hit the lack pot, I’d got my point across. He paused, he mused, he shot the woodpidgeon.

God loves a trier, I think that’s the cliche and it seems obvious to me that I haven’t yet come up with the right picture, or I have but not the right method of getting it, a bit like every most politicians really.

Same again Marcel

Sunday, the day of rest.

The sun has put in an appearance and here on the bench it’s really hot. Not summer ‘I’m going to die’ hot, but enough for a northerner like myself to think wistfully of summers past.

Too hot moved to secondary location.

You know the bells I Ruch chime 10 minutes early, it’s a little like an early warning system, it gives you a chance to consider wether you ‘ really’ want to get inside and sort out lunch? Do you think that a glass of wine at six is a good idea? I quite like it, it give all of the sentiment of the hour without any of that annoying accuracy that everyone craves these days.

Time is a funny thing, we’ve just put the clocks back (fall back everyone) thereby magicing an extra hours sleep for all those that don’t have a dog and to whom such changes matter not. All of a sudden the sun was wrong, daylight was early, the tides will be at a time you didn’t expect because the moon will be wrong as well. The universe by our view anyway will move back in time, in one huge grinding of its gears Einstein will be over ruled by society.

But then who decided what ten in the morning should look like anywho? I think ten in the morning should be a glorious hour welcomed with trumpets and banners, marching bands celebrating its habitual return and old men seated on rough chairs talking about how ten was always better in their day.

Whereas one in the afternoon is a sneaky hour, unlooked for it turns up and whispers in your ear. It’s very quiet and quite maudlin like the maiden aunt at your wedding, or the overweight policeman on his bike ‘ making enquies ‘ presumably into the current lack of policemen on bicycles.

Time eh, funny peculiar rather than ha ha but as Proust might have said ‘ pass the bottle Swany’.

It’s not unusual if you live in a French village where there’s no sewerage and your bath water ends up in a ditch in front of your house to discover you have rats in the garden.
They’re not European water voles nor are they Siberian hamsters, they are definitely rats, but they do seem to be very happy rats.

Sitting on the bench at the front of the house ( as I do at six everyday) I can often hear the rustle in the laurels as one of our happy rats walnut in mouth gambles it’s way past on the way to the ditch. Today he (I’m assuming) drained to stop and take a few steps into the garden and viewed me as I was sitting, Mr Cedric missing the whole scene as he looked the other way!

Well, the look over off he went (gamble,gamble) off through the laurel branches and off I went looking for last night wine,

Chin,chin.

Since we took the decision to buy the field next to our house, this based on the fact that we gained full rights over the large and beautiful walnut tree in the front garden we have laboured and thought hard about the intigration of the two areas. The ‘old garden’ has at least had some cultivation and looking after over the years whereas the field is just that and has been probably for ever.

Yes, it has had some livestock in it over the last ten years and that kept it in check but over the last three years there has been nothing to keep those weeds from invading. So that’s just what they did. Some stuff reaches seven to eight feet high and the brambles have been variously described as epic, bastards and a range of less pleasant but probably more accurate names.

We cut the lot down in Summer, me and Dave, it was back breaking work, hot and I dare say miserable. There was then a two month wait before I could start burning of some of the weeds (we’re not supposed to have fires whilst the grapes are ripening – Ruch bi-law), discovered enormous Badger set and ant hill …

…what has any of this to do with fencing?

The original house and garden was dog proof. When we bought the field we started to think about integration and view and beauty and let’s face it a dog fence does not give any of that so we (I) made some gaps.

Then we bought a puppy aka Mr Cedric. That was fine when he was smaller but I’ve never had a dog before and in a rather cavalier fashion carried on with integration i.e. I made more gaps in the fence, ‘all will be fine’ said I, blah,blah,blah.

It’s not fine!

Cedders is just short of 5 months old now and I have an intimate knowledge of chasing him down the streets of Ruch with no great hope of catching him unless he wants to be caught or is slowed up enough by other curious things foe me to mosey up and grab him. This leads to nothing getting done at all.

Lesson learned: temporary plugging of gaps in fence complete.

Measuring up for fencing the field – ongoing.

Buy dog, get a fence.

Ah, whether in France or the UK the humble ham and cheese toastie a gift that just keeps on giving.

Anyone not having this with HP brown sauce – please leave immediately  !

Good morning chums

Don’t worry no waxing lyrical on the beauty of the morning, let’s talk sanitation.

Yesterday the guys from Aquatain Vidange arrived for the pooh run. I should say this is not unusual in rural France there are so many villages and frankly not enough sewerage plants or at least not local ones.
This necessitated a trip to the cellar, never something that thrills, armed with a torch and followed by two men with a large pipe and rubber gloves.

Well,
Firstly the septic for the main bathroom is under the house and is not sucked out from outside (my first discovery) after some Gallic shrugs and the like we ended up with the cellar lights actually working – hurrah! But the tres ancient and small septic is emptied by taking the top off and sticking the pipe in – boo!
I could describe the process and sites if not smells further after all ‘ I know I was their’ but people are eating and children and those of a delecate disposition maybe watching.
If you think it couldn’t be worse, we have a second tank that does the second bathroom. My understanding of this was that this tank was quite small etc etc, well it isn’t. Neither of the ‘pooh’ guys or I could quite believe it, what a colossal tank – 5m squared under the concrete of the patio area, we looked, we joked, we sucked the crap out and ran away.

So what have we gained, the tanks are emptied and the cellar lights are working, all I’m sure you’d agree positives.
What have we lost, well this is not a freebee but you’d pay through your water rates in GB so no great difference. And two years worth of pooh that we’d been storing.

Lessons learned, know your septic tanks, learn to love them in an arms length kind of way. Understand that the EU and France have brought in impracticle measures for said tanks and that this could make your purchase/selling of a house in France even more beurocratic ( SPANC regulations, yep spank regulations ).
But mostly hats of to the guys who turned up and did a distasteful job in a cheery way, I’d buy them both a pint at the bar although all three of us would need abit of a scrub down before hand.

Ttfn

PS please wash your hands when leaving this blog.

These days you will hear people talk of needing ‘space’, in times gone by maybe it was ‘time to reflect’ and going back further maybe we’d call it what it was ‘ sadness’.
Sitting and hearing the booming guns of the hunters in the fields and woods gives the very mildest impression of what it might have been like in the trenches, excepting that the noise I hear is not constant and not as loud, but it does give anyone with the mildest interest in history pause.

Mr Cedric’s here chewing on a stick and I’m a bit fluey but the sun is shining and the autumnal winds are blowing cool and strong. So much so that they’re blowing the walnuts off the tree which gives us both a bit of a start as they bang into the ground.

Then you find yourself thinking of everyone who isn’t with you to enjoy these days. Parents, brothers or sisters, children who should have had the time that you are inhabiting. It’s easy to think of life as unfair, maybe it is but it’s the only one we have and perhaps the best memorial to anyone is that you try to live your life as best as you can.

The pull of memory is never going to be that far away. Sadness is a part of living and perhaps a necessary part of what it is to be a balanced human being so maybe just accept it when it comes to you, no need to embrace it just acknowledge it like any other passing friend, use it if you’re inclined but try not to wallow or let it turn into despair.

Mr Cedric and I are going to play fetch in a minute, he likes it and I like seeing him running around and getting under my feet. Undoubtedly he’ll run over my asparagus bed and I won’t really mind. I’ll remember everybody I need too even those I never knew and I’ll give sadness the nod it deserves.

But only a nod.