90.

End February..

A tentative song from the black cap rewards me for feeding him throughout the winter; a weak, floating tune announcing his readiness. The plumage of the male siskins are showing canary yellow. All these signs ice my hopes. Keep shining, sun. It`s 17 degrees in the glorious sunshine.

89.


  End February.


A frog's chorus and then spawn in the ponds.
 

Monsieur le docteur Bourelle is a dark, small figure, twisted into a wheel chair at the age of 96. Once he was spry, brave and starving he tells me.

I have come to an aperitif; 7 oclock in the evening, dark already and the sky is a clear Prussian black backdrop.The star points are so numerous they sweep a silver  veil over it.

Mr. B. sits next to me and tells a story that is so staggering I am worried that by 8 he will not have finished and that we will have to part.

Captured in France in 194--, as an officer he spent time in a prisoner of war camp, twiddling his thumbs and wondering how it would go. With 3 other doctors, English, French and Belgian,  they volunteered to medically serve the soldier prisoners of a work camp. They found themselves moved with a troop to Auschwitz, Ozwieciem,  to work on the outside, on transports and warehousing. They lost their officer status because of their volunteering and had nothing to treat any ailing man with. Mr. le docteur B. experienced horrors beyond imagining; but while working on a new hardware transport that the Germans were sending through to the west,  he and the other doctors noticed that the work force were showing signs of blindness: it turned out that they  had been drinking the industrial alcohol within  some strange, bullet shaped containers passing through. He was convinced that these were the war heads of some new weapon..

After the war it became obvious that these had been the new V2 rockets

We nibble the hors d’oeuvres and sip our Muscat. Time to leave politely but I have been cordially invited to the doctor’s house for tea one day next week. We could talk some more , he says, since he likes the English. One of his best comrades in arms was an Englishman, sadly deceased. They had been friends ever since the war and often visited each other while their families were growing up.

I listen to the blackbird’s dusk song . He rings his kingdom with riffs of marvellous purity. He knows not that his early hopes may be ruined. Snows and winds might tear at his first nest. But they might not. This creeping spring might be gentle.

88.

Emile is stomping about the living room, collecting the glasses from a rickety cabinet, the bottles from the kitchen and a cloth from a drawer. He makes a fuss doing it as I stand with my back to the fire.
"I would at least like to know where I come from, " he is saying, " BE where I come from. I don't know how you do it. Your roots must be in England, surely".

This has all come about because I have been talking about my mother, how, as she shrivels and shrinks, back into the soils from whence she came,  I go more to England.
My roots and tendrils are from England, indeed, I answer, but I have ancestors from Languedoc, the Auriols, and I want to be more in France nowadays. Must be the landscape, the wild. He nods slowly and glances at me from behind the bottle.

Marie will come in soon from the barn, struggle with her boots, tut and swear and then roll forward with a wide grin to join us in an aperitif.
"And the folk, the people here ? how do you manage not to feel a stranger?"
I do feel a stranger, I say, always a stranger, even though you are all very kind. But that's not quite the point because I have not burned my boats. I explain that cliche and he's tickled by it. He'll make up a verse before too long.

After the drink and conviviality I tackle the wind outside again and weave my way to my own fireside. The sun is stronger every day. It was 16 C. yesterday but today the sun's warmth is displaced by cold gusts.

87.

Jan 27th.

 That day again. The wails of those lost souls echo down the years. How many like the amazing, sturdy and bright light survivor  Alice Herz-Sommer  were lost in that Holocaust hell. Though I am uneasy at Israel's present position on Palestine, uncomfortable with a perception of tangible hypocrisy; I hope that those lost voices are just that: lost but not forgotten for ever.

 The village holds a small procession around the square and to the mairie. Just a few are wrapped up and walking. The sun is bright and warming although the wind edge is sharp. An aperitif warms the belly too and instills in me a short spell of guilt. We are subdued but whole,  and here. The mayor drinks to memory and coughs repeatedly.

Sparrows scuffle under the tiles of the mairie and are noisier than we are . I walk up the hill and am still touched  by the winter sun. On the bird table a male black cap shovels its thin beak sideways to scoop up the remaining grains of the peanut flour. It has the tenacious energy over and over again to drive off  another, a female with russet cap, attempting to take the food. Soon their hormones will change, their plumage colour will intensify and  glow and relations will be different! And I shall hear their song.

 

86.

Mid January.

In the 2 hours of  warm sunshine a yellow brimstone butterfly has woken from its winter hide and dips into the grass humps and marjoram seed heads running the river banks. From a blackthorn thicket 2 yellow hammers pipe weakly. But to me it is a strong song, a joy to  hear which  gives me a sharp pang of hope for spring. I heard a song thrush at some point in my stroll but couldn't place it.

The relationship with landscape:  its shapes and sounds and memories; they are like a pocket book. I will look at it occasionally when I`m too old to be out there and when there are other landscapes to deal with,  and say, this is the way it used to be, this is how people like me experienced it. 

85.


Early January.



I have just received a text which begins GUESS WHO AM I? Clever ruse. It goes on to advise me to check out a website. So I do out of curiosity. Here it insists the Qu'ran states clearly that to kill one person is a sin; it is as bad as to murder many. So far - good. Then it continues to claim one absolute truth after another in the mathematical ratios and calculations inherent in various natural phenomena. By this time I'm a bit lost. Haven't I heard this somewhere before? The loping, stilted, gappy English is beamed across the ether to be picked up by gullibles.

 Still, the early, grey dusk belies the real truth; that a dunnock pours out its songs so early in the year and that there is the smell of woodsmoke if you  try hard to remember it.

84.

End December.

Snow melt. The black caps are  no longer puff balls but sleek warblers again,  feeding on the ground peanut meal. A male blue tit is inspecting a nest box in the eaves and carrying out a little homework. A great tit chimes out its territory. Greyness pervades and I think I might prefer the bright cleanliness of the snow. Now the litter and  plastic hedgerow decorations sing out. Isn`t a society's condition reflected in its rubbish? And Britain one of the richest nations in the world?

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.