It’s a little known fact, even here in our small village that there is a shrine to Our lady of the forgotten drainage system, well there is. 
Of course I’m not sure that that’s really what she is but there’s the pool and a there’s the madonna in a glass case set into the stone, and on the shelf next to here a slightly forgotten, lonely looking half burnt candle.

We first came across her when labouring up a national walking route, I turned to look back and there she was, not shinning in the gloom alas but painted white in amongst the trees with the gentle sound of trickling water falling into the pool and the buzz of insects issuing from surrounding vegetation.
I take Mr C down the little path to the pond quite regularly but the candle still seems forgotten, and Cedders prefers to run around the pond like a dervish on speed – I wonder how long it is since that candle was lit? Still that’s why I went for ‘forgotten’.
Today it was quite slippery to get down to see her, it’s rained for two days and the leaves on the trees around her have mostly fallen, it’s quite beautiful really: the floor covered in reds and golds the continuing trickle of water and the mirror like surface of the top pool where the water gathers before its fall.
Cedders crashing through the undergrowth – still the whirl of the dervish.

I think maybe it is a place for contemplation, off the beaten track and half way down a hill. It’s quiet, it takes a little effort to go there and when you arrive you want to take that breather and look around and listen to the world around you, maybe even to yourself. Perhaps such things are always on a slightly lonely and forgotten path that takes an effort to find? Who knows.
Next time I’m there, with the dervish maybe I’ll take some matches.

Ttfn

There can be little more joy to be had in life than having breakfast whilst the digger turns up to dig out your sanitation ditch!

Having been musing over our Siberian hamster issue it was with consternation that the digger, tractor and trailer made their stately way up the Peyrat road. What joy we had when they actually stopped. In fact the celebrations turned into a veritable a party as the lemon curd was broken out for the toast and an awe struck silence descended.

It was a little like being cycled through the orgasmatron Mmmmmmmm.
However, sadly the happy rats of Ruch did not enjoy the experience as much as we did. M. Le Happy who had been running around even as the digger made its way up the road has failed to re-appear for a while.

Hey-ho

Imagine the scene.

A group of unconnected people gather by the side of some closed metal shutters, they eye each other. Some are well dressed, maybe they know something we don’t. There’s a stand off as each person avoids the eye of the other, the sun’s going down, zither music plays in the background to the black and white photography of a great French film.

Actually we’re stood by the very closed shutters of the auction house on the quai in Libourne. The action starts at 2pm but in typical French style the doors are not even open.

There’s a crunching and a grinding as a little late the shutters starts to ascend rather like a rusty choir of angels they bleat out there need of oil, but the chain pulls them open despite the wailing.

The benches are layed out and we make our way to the third row, our first mistake – what a couple of amateurs, from here we can’t we the professional jokers at the back, next time it’s armchairs to the rear.

At 14:15 we’re away to a stuttering start to find that the order in the catalogue has no reference at all to the order in which the items are going to be sold, it’s not random it’s French. We move on through the cabinets, the pens go for 360 it’s too rich for our blood, the large broken Chinese vase starts at 300 !

Then there’s the telephone bids, the auctioneer get his phone out and starts phoning people himself, they’re typing the catalogue in as they go, it’s not bad it’s French.

The crowd is restive throughout the telephone war as we take no part. The auctioneer calls for quiet and we crack on, slowly at times, tres vite at others. A lamp for a Euro (trust me you don’t want it). The chairs are up but they get to nearly 600, the jardiniere with the crack – another 600.

The skies are dark now and the big brown furniture is going cheap, it’s time to head for the door.

Shhh he might think we’re bidding

Start closing credits, play music.

For both of us retirement was longed and planned for but in the end came quickly and quite surprisingly,  and meant we had to move pronto from the uk to France.

A lot to process and let settle while at the same time we got a puppy (which we had also planned to do when we retired but maybe not 3 DAYS AFTER WE MOVED (what were we thinking?).   This is his nibs the day he arrived – thinking deeply about his new home.

John had never had a dog before so was not forewarned of the utter time consuming madness of looking after a puppy and I (who should have known better) knew it but had also forgotten.  Add to that a pile of boxes which resembles (still) the warehouse where they hid the Arc of the Covenant in ‘Raiders’, an overgrown field (I mean waist high brambles and ground elder), temperatures days after day in the 40’s, and visitors for a fortnight who were very welcome and helped us greatly both with their two dogs and helping tackle the field.    You can see that we might have bitten off a bit more than was masticable.

And then I was ill.   For about three months.  I won’t go into details but it meant I was operating at between 30 and 50% of normal in these trying circumstances. It’s hard enough being ill and I am doctor phobic never mind about doctors in France so I diagnosed and cured myself.   I had JUST got myself better and had about a week of feeling like I was going from 80 to 100% when on Saturday I was struck down again with a streaming cold.   Out of action again.

So I think we just have about survived the shifting of our life tectonic plates but we really need now to spend time enjoying ourselves

For the next couple of months I want to concentrate on US and making sure that we are ok and enjoying this absolutely gorgeous part of France.

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.