30.

early July

If I never come to France again I will always remember the croaking, grinding sound of window shutters being opened or closed, mornings and evenings. One after another, in the village, like moorings being wound up on rusty cranks.

Starlight blue flax and lupin fields. Baled hay, half built, poppy coloured pavilions, the whirring of crickets and cicadas, and nights too hot to solidly sleep. I use my mother`s tip from her days in India and hang wet towels in the window frame, to cool the incoming air……

Looking back on this journal I see that I felt the winter would go on for ever, that the bitter winds would slice up this part of heaven for eternity and that the earth would always be soggy.


I listen to the thin, musical barks of the red deer does. Their fawn are growing fast and will soon separate. I watch the tractors navigating paths through the shorn hay, turning and turning again through the long rows and slopes, kites wheeling and dipping, ever opportunists, rewarded by mown carrion.

In the evening I see a doe tiptoe out of the brush onto the cut and cleared field. She delicately places one hoof in front of the other, lowers her head, then raises it sharply, listening, sniffing. The night sky is sharp, black and pricked with slivers of silver. The bats zoom along the alley, between the glowing street lamps. I can feel their draughts about my ears.