43.

December 18th.


It has snowed, blown, rained and dusted with snow yet again; bitterly cold, tart, stingingly cold, but now the sun shines pure, unsullied, low but reaching 15 deg. today, according to my thermometer.

Hullabaloos have come and gone. Francois the gentle giant claimed one of his lopey, hunting dogs had had its belly torn open by a badger, a blaireau. He had been searching for it since Wednesday when it had escaped from the pack shed. Amazing how sentimental he was about the animal. On Friday he found it, licking its wounds behind a fallen tree about 2 k. from its home. Not a boar, he claimed; the worst injuries come from badger attacks.

From centuries of habit the European badger is much more aggressive than the British one; bigger too. Because of diminishing space and smaller territories the British badger has become much more socialised, tight family groups stay together and the trodden paths reach back in their memories to thousands of years of use. Hence they are so easily killed on roads as they follow their ancient ways which have been sliced by human development. In France the male blaireau treads over enormous territory and these solitary males are defensive in their attacks..

When I walk through a particular copse and follow a rutted path I notice the rows of badger toilets, dug cavities filled with black deposits of seeds, iridescent insect shells, small bones and hair. I wouldn`t like to meet up with a brock here, one evening.

Francois has his old dad living with him, or rather, just- living with him. Frederique is 97 years old and spent 5 years in a prisoner of war camp, in Germany, used as slave labour. He is gentle, breathless and a little irritable, nowadays; hardly surprising. All the men of this family have resonant, booming voices. Their gabble of Occitaine sounds like an Italian collective. But Fred speaks in a whisper now and his son, grandson, daughter in law and great grand son all care for him preciously. It`s wonderful to witness. They know what he is saying, what he wants, where he wants to go and they push him around in his clackety wheel chair that must have emerged from the grenier, once used, perhaps, by his own father.