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..

62.

Late October


The tight stand of poplars have shed every leaf and two in the centre - most of their bark, . It is now clear that those two are long dead and their trunks shine deliciously. Glistening. straight poles. A nuthatch’s strident, falling call belongs there.

The small copse of larch and beech is still copper and bronze and its floor is a pungent, medicinal smelling carpet of beige needles. Bushels of longtailed tits are echoing each other there as they clean the twigs of tiny beasties. This scented wood belongs to Robert, my least favourite and the least favoured of my neighbours. I did remark to him that the autumn colours were magnificent this year, weren`t they? and he did grunt and nod, which I take as some sort of acknowledgement.

I tried the trick of fast tapping a stick on the hardest part, a knot, of one of the trunks, wanting to see if any territorial woodpeckers noticed. Nothing.

French folk are out mushroom hunting. Cars full of eager hunters trundle about the lanes or park at odd angles in the verges. Bent with baskets they are dotted over the hillsides. They know what they are looking for but I need to learn this skill some day. Who shall I ask?

61.

Mid October.

Soft seeds float high in the warm wind. Pied wagtails chitter in groups on the roof and then take off in a loud crowd.

I cannot believe what I have seen over these last few days. At 2000 meters, in the most beautiful valley and national reserve: 5 griffon vultures, circling and circling and glinting in the harsh sunlight; a brown bear, a family of marmots and a tough walk.

Then lower here on another day a racket of magpies and crows mobbing a juvenile golden eagle, its white patches on the wings and tail quite distinct. It flapped low and then soared low and then disappeared over a wood. I had to write to every one about that.

Emile is a little more soothed. He has brought the herds down from the high pastures, the transhumance in reverse. With great clanging and lowing the grey-dun cattle trip and clatter into the two yards, head after head milling and waiting to be counted and marked.

Sylvie remarks on the potential veal and I say the calves are too handsome to die. Bertrand waves a strand of the last tomatoes at me. Do I want them? I gladly make a sauce out of them with onions, garlic, chervil and olive oil and freeze what I can’t eat today.

It rains at last.

60.

Early October

The little owl stares at me with its pale yellow eyes and nods its spotty head. I like to think it is me that it looks at. It bobs its tubby, squat body and makes short yip, yip sounds. It is in an old walnut tree and I have a clear view through binoculars. These daytime, impatient episodes happen frequently. The owl brings to mind a scolding, aproned fishwife, overcome by this heat. And it is hot; the s.easterly winds are unusually balmy for this time of year. No rain has fallen for two months and leaves are dropping listlessly, not yet in their coloured glory. The well has half a meter of precious water left in it and doesn’t want to refill. Coarse weeds elbow up through the grass which is no longer grass but a drought scorched, bleached mat. I’m not complaining; what survives, survives. The flower meadow patches have done well with the Rudbeckia the champion. I shall have to wait until next spring to see what has really persisted in the sward.

I'm sure I heard the last bee eaters high-going south.
The brambles are a picture of orange, yellow and red, yes brambles along the roadside wires are beautiful in Autumn.
Citril finches, a cloud, apple green and pale gold flashing and chaffinch tails, rising and falling into the field. Plenty of seeds for them in this drought summer. Still a few clouded yellow butterflies on the wild Doronicum . It`s a plant I try to eradicate from the meadow but perhaps I should leave it for its pretty dandelion flowers, a late food plant.

Various birds have taken up their winter quarters already. The redstart is in the eaves morning and evening, the starlings congregate like a parliament on different levels of the roofs and wires that join up the village, the prime performer in good voice as always, and the crowd of sparrows gathers in the ivy with arguments and scuffles, giving away their hideout the minute they get together!

Emile is grumpy; he complains that I haven`t used enough ‘roundup’ on the invading oxalis. True, it is a thug; it marches its bulbils through the shrubs and grass but it has very pretty little pink flowers and clover like leaves which don’t start appearing until summer. He says it throws out its seeds and he does not want it in his potager. But he has been in a poor mood for days and I’m thinking it doesn’t have much to do with the oxalis or me after all.

59.

No explanations for long silence offered.

September


The most beautiful Autumn days. Jays in the forest, chiffcaffs still calling, a booted eagle made one last visit and the kites wheel and dive when the ploughs turn the fields to red. Drought conditions here and the well is practically empty; about 30cm. of brackish water lies over the silt bottom. No use in pumping water, the trees just have to cope. I do worry about the cherry though. Its leaves droop and dessicate prematurely. Around the pear trees hornets and butterflies, red admirals, commas, speckled woods and occasionally a grayling feast on the fermenting, rotting, dropped pears. I'm glad to leave them. I've made enough pear conserves to last until Christmas.

The nights are not yet cold enough for a fire but the heat of the day is tolerable now; balmy in fact. It`s almost a full moon and I find that some bats have moved to the roof terrace for their summer roost. They plop and scrabble out of the metal edging to the roof, that is at a right angle to the pointed stone walls. Plenty of cool, daytime cavities for them there. Droppings scatter over the tiles but I'm glad to sweep them up and feel a proprietorial pride in them!

Emile is looking forward to his retirement, he says mournfully. Doesn’t rate the pension, though. Can`t sell his cows which is another catastrophe burdening him. So many years of work, he says, and look what he has got. Marie has clucked a bit on this subject and says they will have to go on working for a couple more years, at least. I can’t help biting my tongue and thinking few European farmers, the ones who are not tenants, that is, are really poor. Don’t they own land and machinery and livestock? Sooner or later these surely can produce cash.

A big flock of sand martins are skimming the lake, coming in over and over again, their brown backs flicking over to white undersides as they twist and twirl and chatter through an invisible net of insects.

58.

May 10th.

This is the first evening it is warm enough to sit out,. A warm wind from the south west stirs up the grass. The cut fields shine in stripes until Monsieur Raymonde turns the haylage with his tines, way into the evening gloaming. The shrieking swifts are here once more. A just off full moon rises in the grey-blue sky, behind the white flowered horse chestnut, while the sun leaves its last pink tint on the west facing edges of the crags. A flock of bee eaters darts and dances, way up, chirruping all the while. A pity that such lovely birds raid already beleaguered bees.

Emile has told me about Marcel Benoit, this afternoon. Apparently he joined up with the resistance, the Maquis in 1940/1 at the age of nearly 18. He lay out in the woods near the top plateau, took refuge there with a small group, received air drops from the allies into a tiny airfield until it was discovered and the Maquis routed. At this point in the story Emile tilted his head and sharply raised it and I was meant to read into this that someone’s family was tainted with the scent of betrayal.. I couldn’t interrupt though, as this was the longest talk I had had with Emile, to date. Three young men escaped into Spain, two were shot and the other two sank into the shadows of the mountains and their own families, returning to the harvests, the cultivation of their land and the movement of their beasts. People around stayed stumm and grew up beyond the war. One of these was Benoit. Probably silent for many years but now boldly speaking of his history, as he enters his 87th year. Is his conscience clear, I wonder?

I wanted to ask about the two brothers shot outside my house; whether there was a connection, but I thought better of it.

57.

May 8th again.

A grey day. There has been a storm during the night; the wind rattled the shutters and old window panes and plane and poplar twigs strew the square. The Mayor again brings out his piece of paper and, as his hands shake, he rests the sheet on his growing belly and reads out his speech. It is moving nevertheless. No one sings the Marseillaise this time but it is piped through two speakers and we stand to attention. I feel a bit of a fraud. Mme J. is more confused than ever, sings, then falters and listens. She grumbles to anyone who attends to her, after the 2 minutes silence, that the young have no connection with the past. Quite whom she means by the young is unclear. There were certainly folk in their 20s and 30s still perusing the stalls, pointing and chatting during the ceremony. Someone agrees and says that litter is a big problem now. Somehow they have made that connection. They are going on a trip to Austria soon, where it is cleaner than clean, they say. Taxes are high and there are heavy fines for littering, but that is worthwhile, they add. I say, you should see England; this is unsoiled here, in comparison. A few tutt and move on. They are rarely interested in England and my comment only confirms their apathy.

Back in the hamlet for the afternoon it is muggy and warm. I ask Emile, when his rotovator is quiet, whether he used to attend the ceremony. ‘ Pfftt’ he answers. I wait, sure of elaboration. ‘What’s the point? Same thing each time; Mayor just a bit more pissed.’

‘That`s surely the point, though, Emile, the same reminder each year for the victory in Europe’.
‘I`ll tell you what does change and depressed me each time I went: the number of faces which disappeared. Too much like an empty mirror. I was only a thought during the war but I don’t want to be the only one left here who remembers my father describing a squad of German soldiers marching across the square.’

This must be the longest statement I have heard from Emile and I am impressed with the imagery.

I tell him that I had talked with Mr. Benoit, who told me that he had joined the resistance when he was 17 years old and hid in the forests above, taking drops from the allies.

‘I`ll tell you about him another time, Emile hints, ‘ but I have to go look at the cattle now’.

I feel pleased with this conversation and sit on the roof, listening to the afternoon sounds: mowers, tractors, birds, dogs, children. Only 12 houses and all this life.

May 3rd.

I am watching two lovers. The raven couple, always around, twining and intertwining, air acrobats. Their croak is softened, almost musical, but their dance is interrupted, first by a magpie who makes straight for them, quite high for a magpie; and then the very insistent, male kestrel chases them far off, and the magpie is left behind.

I've realised, with a bit of research, which I should have done before, that the kestrels are, in fact, lesser kestrels. The male has no flecks or spots on his ginger brown back, and when his wings are open and I can look down on him from the roof, his wings have a blue-charcoal grey line at the elbow, or wrist? And his tail is the same tone. This would explain why they are so vocal, although not living in a social group.

Marie is at the washing line again; I notice she never hangs out underclothes there. So I’ll never get to see Emile’s underpants, due to this obvious custom. I write this with some relief. Sheets, covers, curtains, jeans and coats flap about in the wind, adding a clapping to the bird performances.

55.

May 1st.

On May 1st. I hear Bee eaters lirrupping high overhead. A gorgeous sound; the harbingers of the real summer weather. The nightingales are quieter this year. What does that mean?

As I am coming down the lane from the hills a male cuckoo keeps flying off the telegraph wire ahead of me and moving further down. His tail fans as he leaves the wire. Finally he dives into the valley, twirls a bit and disappears into a copse from where his bell like call rises up to me . It has been a morning of sights, as on my walk, about an hour ago, a stone marten crossed my path with a limp rabbit in its mouth. It hauled it up an ash tree, only meters away from me and languidly lying across a fork, rabbit still held, it watched me pass. I couldn’t resist stopping, of course, and it still watched. I moved off and then looked back . It was gone. It is these moments that I wish I carried a camera or camera phone as well as my heavy binoculars. But I don’t and probably won’t.

This afternoon, in the windy sunshine, I'm mowing the grass and for sure I can hear Emile singing above the motor noise. He is tinkering with the small, yellow tractor and he is singing loudly and pretty tunelessly in Occitaine, but it’s the first I've heard.

54

April 28th.

I must swallow my words today, for Sylvie and I are taking the b & w dog to the vet. We are stroking her while he seeps an excessive amount of a type of morphine into her forepaw. She had, he diagnosed, a liver tumour and extreme anaemia. She had lived 19 years without illness, irritating us all with her yapping but endearing us to her benign and gentle nature. It is Sylvie’s decision. Her death costs her and Bernard, who refused to take her up in his old Renault, 93 euros. They are a little taken aback, shocked even, but I’d be happy to pay that for a peaceful death!

On the drive back down the curling hills we see the vultures again, a pair, very high and circling, there undersides sparkling in the sharp, early evening sunlight. Sylvie becomes animated, convinced again that they are after her hens. I try to tell her that they are particularly interested in carrion but she says that they are eagles and eat anything living or dead that they can carry away. We leave it at that; after all she had just watched her old dog fall asleep for the very last time. Now I feel a bit of loss and a bit of guilt and go and sit by my fire, staring into the flames.

53 APRIL27TH.

The little black and white dog, who for years has lived in the barn and yard of Sylvie and Bernard is slowly dying and yaps no more She has a distended stomach, moves stiffly, lies for hours and can pass nothing solid . I suggest a blockage, a cancer perhaps, but Sylvie and B. don’t think in terms of vets, so have syringed some olive oil into her, front and rear. They live in hope but I go and speak a few words to the gentle girl who lifts her head heavily and stares at me with doleful eyes until my heart falters and I turn away. There is a rank smell emanating from her stall. She has annoyed me for years with her noise but she should be eased out of this mortal coil quickly and painlessly.

3 or 4 Griffon Vultures swirl and loop in the high thermals, their pale heads catching the light and their long and spread fingered wing tips, dark and shadowed. Earlier in the day I had seen the 2 Egyptian vultures, very distant, but with the binoculars their back wing edge markings clearly visible.

52. April 25th.

Horses and quads roaring up the hill path, shouts of excitement; no more hunting so the dogs are restless and noisy, setting up unison howling .

There is an eccentric English woman here who has gone through a few husbands and has lost most of her money. She keeps horses and a quad bike for transport and rides one while trailing the other two behind her, one on a lead rein, the other pony galloping free, way behind. She has adopted some dogs too and to exercise them she tears down the tracks on the bike with the dogs thundering behind her. I haven’t spoken to her yet, but I hear lots.

This has been the wettest winter the locals say they can recall, although the ski businesses are happy with plenty of snow still, @ 2000m., even avalanches.

The annual flower seeds that I've been sowing in the meadow gaps are all germinating; but no sooner do the Cosmos break than the slugs raze `em to the ground. I must use those slug pellets based on ferrous sulphate that the hedgehogs will not mind. . They work by interfering with the digestive system of the molluscs. They die. Snails of course, climb , so will attack plants from the top and sides. Clematis up against a fence or wall, for instance, will suffer from above while the snails can hide during the day in the crannies of the wood, stems or stones. Still, enough Sweet William and Ox Eye Daisies are spreading to cover the bare patches and give a wonderful sward this year. The flowering will be early but I'm optimistic that the Rudbeckia and Echinacea and Corn Marigold will follow on with some Cornflowers and Cosmos surviving for later summer. I can’t wait; amazing how this process can fill me with pleasure and erase the blues