34
August 12th
Except for the merry swallows and one persistent greenfinch, the birds are mostly silent, while they complete their moult. The green finch persists with its declamation of grreeeet, greeeet, as if it were the world’s most precious song. Every so often the family of goldfinches descends on the seed feeder for a noisy feast and then disappears, tinkling into the distance.
It has been sunny and warm for three whole weeks. If it does rain it is obliging in the late evening. Most evenings have been gentle and balmy although there is a slant of light that is an autumnal reminder and it falls dusk by 8 o’clock.
I have been feeding a hedgehog with peanuts and raisins.. He comes every evening, when I can still just see him, in the gloaming. He snuffles and huffs excitedly when he finds the treats. I say he, because some weeks ago he carried on two or three noisy evening rituals , with another, who I presume is the female. She would have produced her young by now and I haven`t spotted them, yet .
Fetes and festivals are everywhere, Sausage fetes, fruit fetes, festivals of roses, flowers, hunting dogs and music, usually western style jazz with a bit of line dancing thrown in.
Sylvie and I drive to the nearest garden festival where I indulge myself in buying beautiful grasses and roses. She sits at an outside café, smoking, drinking coffee and eating the local snails. That sounds too proverbial to be true, as I read it back, but is really is true. I find myself enjoying Sylvie’s company more and more. She makes me laugh.
People mill about in the evenings; eating, chatting, smoking and sauntering, even in this small place. Television and air conditioner noises seep out into the warm air, through the fly net covered windows, and moths, in their supplicatory dance before the lights, play out the battle with the bats
I'm thinking already about the autumn as I pick the greengages and squeeze the pears for ripeness.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Sunday, August 03, 2008
33.
July 27th.
At the teeming market, 15km. from my village, I'm buying crystallised fruit, nuts, olives and stunningly delicious grapes. I am stopped by a stall holder who, annoyingly, knows I am English. He had been calling out, ‘Madame, madame! `, trying to catch the attention of passing women who might just be interested in his leather belts. I do not notice him calling out to males. But he yells, ‘Mees’, when I am near. I can’t resist asking him how he knows that I am English, although I think I know already. He tells me that French women saunter sexily, time on their hands; he demonstrates. Then he tells me that English women wear particular sandals and stride purposefully. He demonstrates again, perfectly. We are both laughing but I don`t buy a belt.
I come from a small town in England where 2 enormous and resonant exhaust pipes per vehicle is the norm. Here, in this part of France, it`s the little motorbikes that make their mark. Young men externalise their identity by putting their foot down in rhythmic bursts. And that’s just a very restrained way of describing it.
July 27th.
At the teeming market, 15km. from my village, I'm buying crystallised fruit, nuts, olives and stunningly delicious grapes. I am stopped by a stall holder who, annoyingly, knows I am English. He had been calling out, ‘Madame, madame! `, trying to catch the attention of passing women who might just be interested in his leather belts. I do not notice him calling out to males. But he yells, ‘Mees’, when I am near. I can’t resist asking him how he knows that I am English, although I think I know already. He tells me that French women saunter sexily, time on their hands; he demonstrates. Then he tells me that English women wear particular sandals and stride purposefully. He demonstrates again, perfectly. We are both laughing but I don`t buy a belt.
I come from a small town in England where 2 enormous and resonant exhaust pipes per vehicle is the norm. Here, in this part of France, it`s the little motorbikes that make their mark. Young men externalise their identity by putting their foot down in rhythmic bursts. And that’s just a very restrained way of describing it.
32.
July 25th.
The garden is overflowing with food of all sorts, with tomatoes, beans, salads, carrots, herbs with more aroma than I have ever smelled before, and potatoes.
Every day I go on a Colorado beetle hunt. Looking like mini humbugs, they creep to the undersides of the potato leaf, lay their patches of bright yellow eggs and munch through the foliage and stems. Then they drop to the ground to continue their damage on the roots. What is interesting is how they feign dead. I pick them off and place them carefully on a hard surface. I'm going to use the full force of my foot. But they lie inert, legs in the air, not a wiggle or wave. Do they know? I've tried the trick of turning and getting on with something else. When I turn back, they have righted themselves and are marching off with all six legs. If I stay poised over them with murderous intent, they don’t move for what seems like minutes, and I’m not very good at waiting those minutes to complete the research. The eggs need crushing too, so I spend inordinate time examining each leaf. I could spray, I know, but have resisted this, so far. I did make an evil smelling stew from all the illegal fag ends from the local bar, to the grand amusement of the owner, Antoine. ‘ Madame Alees, la jardinière, ah, ha !’ He greets me regularly, like this, and has invariably, a thin fag stuck to his bottom lip. He does wear T shirts and cool clothes and has been known to sport flip-flops.
After boiling up the butts with water in an old tin, I strained it and diluted it and began to spray the nicotine solution onto the plants, with a tied scarf over my nose The beetles were still happily busy, two hours later. For further research, I took one beetle and placed it in a jam jar. Then I sprayed the tan coloured liquid into it and waited. Lo, the creature was dead within half an hour. Maybe I shall have to refine the technique; on the other hand, my time consuming, murder campaign might be less carcinogenic.
The strawberries have come to an end and the raspberries and blackcurrants have just been harvested. I'm carefully examining the Reine Claude greengages for signs of insect damage. They will be lusciously ripe in about another month.
No birds sing except the crows and ravens, the buzzards and kites and sometimes a blackbird. All that twittering, hectic row has subsided. I hear a lark sometimes but the cuckoos and nightingales have left for another continent and thrushes, goldfinches, tits and warblers have either departed or are in a period of depressed moulting and are keeping advisedly low profiles.
July 25th.
The garden is overflowing with food of all sorts, with tomatoes, beans, salads, carrots, herbs with more aroma than I have ever smelled before, and potatoes.
Every day I go on a Colorado beetle hunt. Looking like mini humbugs, they creep to the undersides of the potato leaf, lay their patches of bright yellow eggs and munch through the foliage and stems. Then they drop to the ground to continue their damage on the roots. What is interesting is how they feign dead. I pick them off and place them carefully on a hard surface. I'm going to use the full force of my foot. But they lie inert, legs in the air, not a wiggle or wave. Do they know? I've tried the trick of turning and getting on with something else. When I turn back, they have righted themselves and are marching off with all six legs. If I stay poised over them with murderous intent, they don’t move for what seems like minutes, and I’m not very good at waiting those minutes to complete the research. The eggs need crushing too, so I spend inordinate time examining each leaf. I could spray, I know, but have resisted this, so far. I did make an evil smelling stew from all the illegal fag ends from the local bar, to the grand amusement of the owner, Antoine. ‘ Madame Alees, la jardinière, ah, ha !’ He greets me regularly, like this, and has invariably, a thin fag stuck to his bottom lip. He does wear T shirts and cool clothes and has been known to sport flip-flops.
After boiling up the butts with water in an old tin, I strained it and diluted it and began to spray the nicotine solution onto the plants, with a tied scarf over my nose The beetles were still happily busy, two hours later. For further research, I took one beetle and placed it in a jam jar. Then I sprayed the tan coloured liquid into it and waited. Lo, the creature was dead within half an hour. Maybe I shall have to refine the technique; on the other hand, my time consuming, murder campaign might be less carcinogenic.
The strawberries have come to an end and the raspberries and blackcurrants have just been harvested. I'm carefully examining the Reine Claude greengages for signs of insect damage. They will be lusciously ripe in about another month.
No birds sing except the crows and ravens, the buzzards and kites and sometimes a blackbird. All that twittering, hectic row has subsided. I hear a lark sometimes but the cuckoos and nightingales have left for another continent and thrushes, goldfinches, tits and warblers have either departed or are in a period of depressed moulting and are keeping advisedly low profiles.
Friday, August 01, 2008
31.
Mid July
I remember reading Richard Mabey`s book: Nature Cure, and as well as thinking, ‘Yes, yes, I recognise that,’ over and over again, I noticed that at that time he hadn`t been privileged enough to observe the evening vanishings of the swifts.
I am lying on the roof terrace and see and hear them as they gather, shriek, divide, rise, spiral, then swoop again. Each swoop down is followed by a higher rise and a conglomeration, until they do not descend again. There they are, like sky born frogspawn, barely audible, rising and rising, in patches and swabs which join together. Eventually there is silence, the sky is dim and the swifts have vanished. They must be swinging in some stratosphere, cradled in light air.
I juxtapose their image with that of a suffocated society living in an airless, over pixelated atmosphere and fall asleep, only to awake on the roof, stiff but not cold, and realise that no nightingales are serenading. They have left. This leaves me with a faint melancholia as it surely signifies the peak of summer. Now I have difficulty, in spite of the wet towels, in falling asleep again in my usual bed.
Mid July
I remember reading Richard Mabey`s book: Nature Cure, and as well as thinking, ‘Yes, yes, I recognise that,’ over and over again, I noticed that at that time he hadn`t been privileged enough to observe the evening vanishings of the swifts.
I am lying on the roof terrace and see and hear them as they gather, shriek, divide, rise, spiral, then swoop again. Each swoop down is followed by a higher rise and a conglomeration, until they do not descend again. There they are, like sky born frogspawn, barely audible, rising and rising, in patches and swabs which join together. Eventually there is silence, the sky is dim and the swifts have vanished. They must be swinging in some stratosphere, cradled in light air.
I juxtapose their image with that of a suffocated society living in an airless, over pixelated atmosphere and fall asleep, only to awake on the roof, stiff but not cold, and realise that no nightingales are serenading. They have left. This leaves me with a faint melancholia as it surely signifies the peak of summer. Now I have difficulty, in spite of the wet towels, in falling asleep again in my usual bed.
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.
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.
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