83.

Late December.

England is very white; clogged with snow, airports jamming up, ferries scooping up the remainders, Euro tunnel on go slow. Great arms of feathered snow reach out over the lanes and paths. Rimed frost, blue and gold,  over the surfaces. A hedgerow on a hill rim is  like a paper cut out, the setting sun at its roots; branches of purple black and a trimmed table top. 

Children squawk on sledges and two women of a certain age enjoy a polished slope on an old and perfect Swiss toboggan, landing in the hedge at the bottom and rolling over, blowing white ice from our mouths and noses. Rosy with fun, that's us.

Red wings fall from the sky defeated by this harsh winter. One in the middle of the road, all hopes lost. I cut up apples and fling them where I can.

Long, sleek shafted leeks slip easily from the frozen soil for a big, family soup pot. No quarrels like the mass of starlings beyond the window.

82.

  December snow.

 2 crows bathing in the snow: one wing shoulder along the rim of the snow, then the other slid along; a preen under wing then the head buried and shaken.  They take a slide, a skid along their back sides as a final move in the sequence that is both balletique and comic.
Snow slips and flumps from branches as I stroll the lanes, compacted underfoot but well tramped. A yellowish light pervades. A partial moon eclipse may be seen apparently tonight but the sky is blanketed, muted with snow cloud.

Family calls and England is  white

81.

Mid December.


The river runs a torrent and the sun in its midday hours sparkles a 15 deg. warmth. I sit on a tussock and watch the water call back to  the bole of an ancient, tubby willow leaning over the opposite bank.The ripples flicker, fold and regain positions over the ridged willow bark in lovely flowing patterns of yellow, green and white, reflected light.

Nuthatches pipe their ways along and up the trees.The sun warms my back and  I am held still by that and the light play..

Back home Bertrand and Sylvie's fire has not been working well;  dark smoke billows and curls over the roofs and Sylvie is outside in a quilted coat that reaches over her boots. She is waving through the kitchen window to her brother who eventually emerges covered in soot. We do all laugh. My fire is glowing hot and the flames lick clean the stove glass door. I am smug knowing that. 

80.

Early December

Thin snow lies over the land. Chaffinches and sparrows flock to the scattered sunflower seeds . Fox prints across the garden: nice sharp claw ends and one foot placed carefully behind the other in such a straight line. Some of the prints are just in pairs as if left by a two legged creature. The fox likes to place hind foot into fore print.

I look carefully for shoots, for hopeful  signs amongst the iced grass. The sun wavers weak light and  drops too soon behind the western hill leaving a blue grey glimmer as I retreat to the fireside and a new book.

79.



November.

I think our ability to imagine the non immediate, of the --what is possible --makes us essentially unhappy and dissatisfied beings. Pascal thought the miseries of ‘man’ proved his greatness but I'm not so sure. 

My best relaxation is to lie comfortably under a large tree and look up at the worlds therein. But now is the season of  cold and damp so I wait for some warmth in the days before I indulge myself again.

Cold and damp it is; outdoors does not offer much of a welcome. I can push paint about again and again, and read more and more until my back and shoulders ache or toast my toes by the fire but I need to be outside. I tramp about a bit; turning the corner from the village so that I can see the valley then snail up the hill to see the valley from a greater height. The sky is bereft of birds. I do the crows injustice to be sure. 

Obviously a grey mood is descending.

78.

Mid October.

Clouds and waves of birds. The sky fills with swelling and changing shapes, sometimes dense, othertimes thin and fragmented. Chaffinches, bramblings, cirl buntings, goldfinches, more I cannot identify. They swoop and pour onto the uncut sunflower heads and onto the turned fields, rising again in billows with thin chatterings and tsips and chinks. Then buzzards, about 7 of them, circling high, then spiralling down, some perching on trees or fence posts. opportunists all. This is the great migration funnelling in through the Pyrenean passes.

Marie's marmalade cat sits quite still, tail end twitching and trembling as she watches a group on the pear tree who dart in and out of the curling leaves finding soft insects and blown seeds. As I stand, hardly daring to move,  3 willow warblers arrive,  blushed buff little chests, weaving and darting amongst the low ivy at the base of the tree, their clear tsooee warning calls check out the cat.  And gathering this sudden harvest,  5  kestrels swing, hover,  loop and plummet..What a show! An essential experience. Gives me the measure of myself. Insignificant!

4 piles of cut oak logs are stacked pleasingly in the barn. A chill wind blows.

77.

Early October.

Emile retrieves two bushes from the back of his white Renault van. They are the BROOM type, not too prickly but very twiggy. Its S W English or Welsh names are perfect - Brusher or Basom. Just the job. . He climbs through his roof top skylight with the bushes held stems together and tied with a thick rope. I am watching him from the bottom of my garden. He walks nimbly, legs astraddle the ridge, and drops the rope down the chimney shouting to Marie in the room below. He sits the shrubs prettily on the top , thin trunks down, so that they look like a fancy sculpture blooming from the chimney mouth. Marie pulls to his order and the brushwood condenses, squeezes and disappears. A broom to sweep the chimney. Voila!

76

Late September.

 Woodpiles are growing. Ordered and patterned they poke from under balconies, eaves and tarpaulins. The various music  of  log cutting and splitting fill the early evenings and weekends while trailers and carts rattle up and down the lanes. Under my hat brim the sloping sun light is still  strong and makes me squint as I splash into the pipingly cold lake water. I haven`t quite got the wet suit habit as Roger Deacon eventually did.

Flocks of finches, a yellow hammer or two and some  linnets startle up from the red rutted field as I walk back glowingly.  Small coppers and heaths and blues crowd onto the last flowers of cosmos and savoury. The coppers defending their chosen flowers with dancing attacks on the other butterflies. A golden season.

I am borrowing the long, aluminium ladder from Bertrand and he has left the barn door open for me to collect it with no offer of help.He says yes, yes, by all means take it, you are welcome.  I stagger with it round to the front of the house and climb to clear the honeysuckle, to unplait the tangle and spoil the sparrow roost. Sylvie has obviously sent him to check up, perhaps for my safety perhaps for another mysterious reason for he appears in his slippers and starts chatting and puffing.  I say I have done as I climb down. So, he  sighs,  bravo, job well done and then walks off, leaving me to carry the ladder back to his barn.

75

Mid September


A train journey across France. The TGV is full and noisy as it prepares for take off. An elderly and highly made up woman places her small, matted dog onto the table between her and the opposite passenger. An uproar ensues. Ah non, Madame, this you cannot do! The dog owner whines a little; she says the sweetie will get trodden on under the table or in the corridor.  On cue the ungroomed pet, as it is lowered to the floor, leaps at a passerbye, squeezing past the bags and feet. Ah non Madame, once again. This is not acceptable! Chaos and voices mingle with the yapping of the animal. A train journey to write home about .

74.

17th September.

Swallows all in a line,  all on  the line swung between alleys. Strings of  chittering families. The lucky last of the final broods. Going soon,  well fed and fresh for the start of the race to the south. May the many barns stay ruined and open for their next year. I shall miss their tinkling run of notes and frantic calls as they cross hunt  the skies.

Still hot most days and  grass like sand . Leaves droop and wilt and the Autumn raspberries, barely swelling to any size worth collecting are intense in their dry flavour. In the early morning the fine cobwebs hang like gauze hammocks, from stem to blade. Slug trails where the night's dew makes the only damp places.

A single stork stately walks the field; a lost migrant on another epic jouney to Africa.

An occasional blackcap sings  a memory of spring and summer.

73

Down at the allotments again in the early evening . Here is a fire in the hedge spreading to the shed. Suzanne is calling out   au secours, au secours and I run over. A little smouldering --a little creeping flame along the dry grass at the base of the hedge . It could reach the shed. It is speeding up. It`s because Suzanne of the beacon red hair insists on putting a match to the pile of dirty chicken bedding. Put it on the compost heap or just leave it to rot, I have told her many times. Mr Sarbontier says it`s best burnt she has answered just as many times. Now old Mr Sarbontier is here, he is puffing and huffing and has called the Pompiers. Sure enough, as the blackened grass sets up a snaking glow and the foot of the shed begins to char I can hear the siren.

Down the narrow path come 2 men  with a portable pump and hose. They shake hands with Mr Sarbontier and comment on the weather. English are not the only ones I can tell you. They chat a bit, not a glance to the creeping fire; they shake hands with Suzanne then with me; they know Suzanne's cousin Danielle so they gossip a little about her. The side  of the shed is burning well now.  Oh La La,  they say at last and saunter to the river`s edge, peer down the mud steps and - Oh La La, phhhhhh! One sidles down the bank and plops the filter end of the thick hose into the running stream. The pump generator sputters, the pump, small enough to be held in the arms  starts to hum and a jerky flow of water judders out of the top end of the hose. One of the firemen ambles to the smoking shed without the hose,  picks his nose meditatively and then strolls back to fetch the hose which he directs with half a heart along the hedge, the grass and finally at the shed. After 3 minutes there remains just an acrid, eye watering twirl of smoke and one blackened shed panel. The pump whirrs to a standstill. Pompiers light up their cigarettes promptly .  To end the entertainment  the process of handhaking starts all over again. Au revoir, au revoir and thank you.

Mr Sarbontier, Suzanne and I sit at the rickety garden table and agree that we should have just thrown a few litres of river water over the fire. They look at me nodding because they know that it would have been me clambering up and down the bank with the buckets.........

72

June

For my sins I have passed to my sons the black dogs of depression. Each one trails his way through the months of melancholy, sleeplessnesss, unsummoned anxiety and exhaustion. Emerging they are changed, as we all are, grown through, taller, wiser but warier. Their comforts are different than mine but each succour taken is a gift. I stare into the distance, walk away the melancholy, indulge in faintly pleasurable loneliness or dig a hole, literally. They have to discover their own ways, own successes and failures.  They don't really want to hear of my experience.

A flower jungle is my garden, climbing, clinging, twining and creeping. I am contented for now.

71.

Mr Arnaud on a tractor yelling at his dad, a bent stick supported by a stick, like a fairy tale figure. Eh, eh, oh, oh, ah, ah! He calls the milk cows in; a dog passes along the bovine line and round the back, slinkily, pausing, crouching low with its nose down along the grass. The ditch stinking as it catches the run off from the milk parlour. Piles of muck and straw seep a reddish ooze into the mix of waste milk, disinfectant and urine. A Coypu lies dead in the road, its snout bloody; knocked by a car in the night, probably. They live in these streams and ditches. It`s not the first dead one I`ve seen but I never see road kill badgers. In England we have interrupted their territories but here, there is just space.

70.

May 22nd.

Sound of tractors everywhere and the first cut of grass for silage or haylage. Kites arrive almost immediately..............uncanny. Stripes of yellow, grey and green, like bright bed covers, curve over hill and dip.

Serin, goldfinch, black cap, blackbird, sparrow and starling are the noisy bunch. Cuckoos in the early morning and dusky evening. A doe's bark in the hill copse.

Robert the noisy dog tribe owner is off too, with family, in another white camper van, for the Pentecote bank holiday and I`m left with relief at the quiet. I open the barn doors resolutely wide, scrub them and brush them free of wads and swags of cobwebs. Sunlight streams into the interior and I plan how it might one day be a little hideaway appartment, opening straight onto the wilderness. I'm lucky.

Sylvie and Bernard are quiet too in this heat. She has potted and repotted all her terrace plants and  planted out the tomatoes. Bernard has strimmed his dandelion lawn and the dust has settled in more stripes onto the damp window panes I've just washed.

69.



Emile and Marise have bought a camper van. I can`t quite believe this. Emile is in shorts and T shirt. Marie is, well no, not quite in shorts but a skirt that isn`t meant to be a mini, a floppy hat and a blouse that is in orange and black stripes. They have bought two all terrain bikes from Decathlon and off they are going towards the Mediterranean for a few days. We have to, says Emile. Nearly retired, someone to watch over the cows and calves, the dog and cat have plenty of food in the barn; we`ve just got to go on an excursion. It`s what life is about. I  keep my mouth closed and my thoughts sealed there.I`m finding this all charming, delightful, joyful in fact. I’ve not been a good judge apparently as this is the last thing I would think of, that Emile and Marie are going on holiday in a white camper. I thought money wasn’t there but obviously farmers can put their hands on some cash when the time comes. Go for it, I say, bonnes vacances, bonnes randonnes!

68.

May 20th.

I`m helping on the allotments nearbye, looking after an English couple’s plot while they are away. Chickens need tending and plants watering. Suzanne, carrying a triangular wedge of bright orange hair and depression and helplessness possible tangled up in it, asks for aid each time she spots me there.I think she has clocked me these last few days! Her man is in hospital recovering from chemotherapy and she can`t cope. She is afraid of hens and hers live in filth and are fed wheat only, when she remembers. They are not laying well, few eggs, she moans. . Every one who has a strip there throws them grass, clover and pis–en-lit. I tell Mr. Sarbontier that dandelions are called piss-a-bed, amongst other names, in England too. He is delighted with that and shuffles away from the tubs of water he is filling from the stream to tell Marguerite, his wife. They are both 84. He was ‘Artisan’ all his life, plastering, building and carpentry. Nowadays he creaks and groans but laughs a lot. You have to be out he says, the garden keeps us going, winter or spring, keep watering and everything will grow. I know but don`t you think we have had enough rain lately, I ask. Look at the dust rising from that tractor, he points. The surface is dry, dry, dry. I think people fuss to much about watering; it brings up the roots unless it is a soaking you are giving, but I don`t say any of that to him; just nod and blow out a corresponding sigh, as he does

67.



May 16th.



The cold wind has finally left us and a warm wind swiffles instead. After the snow came 2 days of spring and then a north easterly took hold for 10 days. Birds were silent, crickets were too.


But this morning a booted eagle, chased loudly by 2 crows sails over the roof . Its kii -ah call fades as it rises and I see its pale chest and wings clearly back banded dark brown. The sun shines warm. Swallows swing over the grass tips and I pass  orchids in the meadows that have never seen in  England, as I swish past in boots... Military and Lady orchids, Early Purple and Serapias. I wear boots because I saw a viper earlier, sunning itself on my pebble and rock garden. It clattered fast away as I approached so I only caught a glimpse. I`ll keep this secret from Emile. He and Marise were carrying on a conversation over the wind. They missed each other's words; one spoke and the other said  eh? After all their years their familiarity makes them deaf . She was hanging out socks, jerseys and sweatshirts as if the cold was done with and the wind could have them.

66.                       May 8th.

VE day once more. The rain holds off, the clouds flit across the sky and several of us notice 6 griffon vultures circling very high. A cow dying, monsieur Sarbontier says, or one of us doesn`t know something they do. Madame Jaure sings the Marseillaise valiantly and I tell her that I really am impressed. She is shaky and her great niece holds her elbow firmly. The Maire is shaky too but it is his diabetes not the tipples this time.

We all walk home in the sunshine, relieved that the snow has gone and the spring has taken hold again. A few of us drift into our houses or along the lanes to the hamlets and I slowly trail up the hill to mine, carrying a pot of dandelion honey, traditionally called crameillotte , the woman who sold it to me said. How the bees choose only dandelions is a puzzle but I smiled at her and bought the jar at the tat sale going on in the square.


In the evening  cars and vans come pouring down the hills to the valley, hooting non stop. A wedding tradition. The party will go on all night in the village hall. The last wedding celebration threw out a base drum beat until 5 o’clock in the morning. Happy days.

65

Snow! May 4th. Snow! Slushy but 4cms. of snow - unbelievable. Grass flattened, poppies frosted, swallows silent. Where have they gone? What are they living on? After weeks of social excitement, pairing and nest speculation there isn't an insect in the air to feed them. Above 600 metres the snow is deeper. The sky is leaden and my feet are cold which is a sure sign of a turn down. Pilates and a log fire loosen my joints while I can`t get out. How long will it take for the sun to return, please?

64.

I watch Emile till his furrows with a slow cultivator that makes a great deal of noise. He leans forward to the extent of his stretched arms as it works forward then gathers up his feet and joins the machine again. This continues for 10 meters each furrow until the engine putters to a stop Then Marie joins up behind him with a rectangular, woven basket. She is wearing a red and brown thick pullover in this 25 degrees. Feet on either side of the trench Emile chops at the soil and takes one straddled pace forward. Marie drops a seed potato in and he uses his heavy hoe to chop the soil again, backwards towards her rubber boots and over the planted potato When they have ended the row they bend round and go to the next, up and down. They do not know that I am watching. I am quite hidden. So much for their privacy.

Bee eaters again and a hoopoe. Fewer nightingales this year I think, and definitely fewer cuckoos or just that they are not in their best voices. But a walk at dusk is still a thrill just to listen along the copses.

May1st. The fisherman are all out, have been since last night. The Aspens drip onto the footpath and onto the fishing shelters dotted along the lake shores. Even the bird hide is requisitioned: generators, bunks, sleeping bags and fishing gear. Today is a holiday and not one minute is missed of this special but damp day. They are allowed 6 catches each and they go mainly for the big catfish that fill the depths and spawn in the shallows . Shelters have been raised for the barbecued lunches and dogs are tied up beside just about every pitch. That`s the form around here.

Now the rain cloud hangs pierced on the slopes above the water, not rolling downwards yet, a fine curtain of drizzle is just above me and the sun, thinly glazed, wavers light over the yellow clay shore. If you look again it could be an estuary of S Devon and salt water instead of fresh reservoir. The steeple bell, long drowned, is sometimes heard, they say.That`s a universal legend. It was inundated in the 20s. The frogs’ chorus instead, call and answer, call and answer rings to and fro and bubbles skitter across the green pool edges; not so much croaks as weedy roars and cackles.

Again the Golden Oriole, that lovely, hidden call; I can’t see him but a shadow flits behind the pinnacle of a poplar and the 'llee -oo, llee-li-oo' slips into the space. I trudge through mud but the rain holds off. A baleful, drawn out, wolf howl from a huntsman’s dog, tied up no doubt, ripples down from somewhere: a barn, a shed, a pen, a hamlet above the lake woods. . Careful not to tread on the delicate cephelanthera, the white helleborine, the lady orchid or the dour man orchid I emerge into a rain storm and the path takes me to the van..

63.

On April 6th on my way back to France after a very cold and hard winter, of weather and work, I hear the first cuckoo and swallow, see my first brambling, marked similar to a chaffinch but more dark yellow and stripes to its head. Later, finally at this place, on April 11th. I see and hear a solitary bee eater, chirruping not far above my head, holding its position and its distinctive arrow head shape before curving off higher and away. Bumble bees motor in and out of the bramble patch and turf pile and I gaze at the jungle that I will have to tackle, petit a petit, pas a pas. The snow fell in three great lots, Emile tells me, and here, the drifts were impassable. Every time the snow plough cleared them the snow fell again. The temperature dropped to minus 12 several times and during the last fall in March it was just as cold. But you know, Emile continues, weather used to be like that every winter when I was younger.


Now it is so warm, 21 degrees in the middle of the day, the cold is hard to imagine but I remember an earlier winter I spent here; I look at the delicate Sophora and it has only a dozen flowers and is browned and bent from its winter trials. But it lives. Late plum and cherry blossom, late daffodils in the meadows and new cowslips on the slopes. A fire each night.

On April17th. I see the male hen harrier again, scooping his territory, checking the quarters, low and tipped like an aircraft. Talking of aircraft, the sky is empty of any but the local gliders. A coup for nature…for the Icelandic volcano. A glider to surpass all of them, a golden eagle circles lazily at immense height; silent, so silent it sails over the valley and into the gorge .

On April 20th. the nightingales arrive. The blackcaps set fair competition in their musical invention but the nightingales win out best.

April 27th. Camping on the plateau. Very warm and some folk are swimming in the lake. Last year it was wet and cold at this time. The garden is luscious and flourishing. Courgettes, tomatoes and squash to go out soon..