Spring is here

After a couple of days of horrendous gales and freezing weather, this morning it would appear that spring is springing.  We have heard our first cuckoo and my little friend Hyacinth has some new additions.

All before breakfast

I’m working.  I have a little (time-consuming and poorly paid) project transcribing old television programmes in preparation for sub-titles to be added.  This morning, unable to sleep, I have been up early working on a wildlife programme.

It’s a very interesting programme and the latest scene is on killer whales.  Beautiful animals, graceful despite their size but cruel hunters.  The orcas are hunting seals.  I am trying to type the script without looking at the pictures, I know it will end in tears.

I was right.  ’Oh, they’ve got one’, the presenter says, ‘Poor seal’.

I’m watching this programme through half-closed eyes.  I think that now is probably a good time for a tea-break.  7am, just light.  I put the kettle on and look out into the garden, musing on the inevitable cruelty of nature.

I see our boy, Figgy.  He catches a mouse and swallows it in two bites.

Breakfast, anyone?

It’s been a while

Winter seems to have been a long one but we have been fortunate enough to take a few days off in Spain.

Now we’re home again things are looking up.  The frozen days before we left are gone and if my friend Mr Meteo is to be believed we aren’t going below zero degrees again for at least the next 10 days (mind you, we all know how reliable he can be!).

Winter was spent hibernating, keeping warm and we threw in a smattering of social occasions to keep the spirits up.  We were delighted to host a little gathering here for 20 of our friends and to feed them a selection of curries – a convivial evening which appears to have gone down well.

Two guests missing from that evening were our good friends and almost neighbours who have had various health problems over the last couple of years and who have had mostly house-bound, and for part of it bed-bound time since last September.  How delighted we were when we got home to find such improvements that we immediately issued an invitation for lunch today.   They both looked so well, and it was a true pleasure to have them visit us for the first time in such a long time.

These two dear friends mean a lot to us and we are delighted to have them back socialising again.

On the house-sale front we had another viewing while we were away;  two parties are still interested in buying if they can just sell their own houses.  We are encouraged by the interest but it would be nice to get an offer or two and plan our next move.  Meanwhile we are still happy here, the sun has been shining and spring is around the corner.

Things that go bump in the night

Bang, crash, squeak.

Squeak?

Squeak, squeak, squeak.  Silence.

We both sat up in bed with a jolt and switched the light on.  Figaro has exceptional hearing and had found himself a shrew which got through into the bedroom from the eaves.  He sat looking at it for a while, sad to miss a good game of catch.

Jon removed the lifeless creature and Figgy returned to his bed and slept the rest of the night.

It’s great to know that we are to be protected from any shrew invasion of the bedroom!

Our brave night-time protector!

Mini trip to UK

We were very sad to travel to the UK last week to say farewell to a lovely lady in a beautiful ceremony.

The trip did give us the chance to meet up with many of our families, particularly Jon’s family.  It’s a sad fact of life that we only see many members of our families these days at those momentous occasions of marriage and death but we are always very pleased to see them and catch up on news of our offspring and, nowadays, their offspring too.

Our lovely catsitters are having problems of their own at the moment, so we had to keep our trip as short as possible, but we did have time to take in some sea air last Sunday morning at Wimereux. We certainly didn’t expect such a beautiful and mild morning in mid-November. The beach was busy with families; children building sandcastles, whole families on rollerblades, grownups digging in the sand in search of a free lunch of mussels.

Fortunately I was able to take a few photos without the crowds in:

 

Still here!

We’re still here, you know.  Maybe a little quieter than we have been but that’s probably due to our being rather busy during the summer.

No, no visitors, at least not since June, sadly, but we’ve been plotting, planning and generally getting on with ‘stuff’.

We’ve had book group meetings, music groups meetings, lunches, suppers, a 60th birthday, a 90th birthday and heaven knows what else.  But the main thing we have been up to is getting our house ready to sell and finding a new home.

Yes, La Vie is on the move, if all goes to plan.  We have found ourselves a dear little house closer to the Atlantic Ocean and have put our own house on the market.

We really didn’t know what to expect, the house market being rather slow around these parts, but we have been encouraged by a viewing per week since the house went on sale, and two very interested parties.

So, watch this space, we may have a whole new adventure and project ahead of us.

Meanwhile, if you are interested in buying a property in France, take a look at our website France House for Sale

Ne’er cast a clout…

What fantastic weather we are having.  It’s very worrying that we haven’t had any significant rain for many weeks and you just have the feeling that we will be paying for this in some way (remember our floods last June?) but we have been able to enjoy the weather so far.

However, we are not to be complacent.  My old friend Mr Meteo’s website reminds me this morning that we are about to encounter the ‘Ice Saints’.  Three Saint’s days on 11, 12 and 13 May that traditionally bring overnight frosts, but as soon as these days are over, we are not to fear frost again.

Just as well I’ve not bought my tomato plants and geraniums just yet!

It’s the little things…..

A beautiful, almost cloudless sky, 29 degrees in early May, lizards basking on the wall hoopoes, blackcaps (they make an awful lot of noise for something so small!) and cuckoos by day, nightingales (who also make an awful lot of noise) by night;  crickets chirruping away 24 hours, the drone of dozens of bees in the cotoneaster…  bliss.

Add to that a visit to the dentist.  Ours is just about an hours’ drive away – this is obviously not the nearest but one recommended to us some time ago and according to Jon, he’s very good (I’ve not had the need yet, or at least let’s say I’ve been putting it off).  The drive is through the most stunning Lot and Dordogne countryside and we get to see  variety of different plants and wildlife on the way.  Acacia trees in full bloom, swaying gently in the breeze and rustling, some walnut trees are far more advanced than others – must be a different variety and poppies – fields and fields of them like carpets of scarlet expecting a royal visit any day.  Hovering eagles and buzzards and red kites.

Hayfields have been cut and we even saw combine harvesters not so very far from here.  Villages too are swathed in colour, hanging baskets with tumbling petunias, lobelia and gypsophilia, roses clambering over walls and gateposts.

Such eye candy make a trip to the dentist a real pleasure.

Virtual favourites

I visited a friend this morning.  She’s a little incapacitated at the moment after a contretemps with her horse and some hard ground.

She told me that she has been enjoying reading our blog, particularly our travel tales over at La Vie En Route and has, with extra time (enforced) on her hands, been digging a little deeper into the world of blogging, even going so far as to have entered into correspondence with a lady way across the Big Pond.

It’s amazing what this little tool does, this internet thing. You can read the daily goings on of people far away, follow people’s travels, even keep up with what your neighbours are doing.  I have made friends through writing this blog too and with my latest layout (it’s a little like rearranging the furniture in the lounge, it needs doing occasionally so that you can clear out the dust from the back of the piano!), I have deleted my blog roll so I thought I’d share with you just a few of my favourite sites.

Firstly food passions.  Ruth Clemens on The Pink Whisk was runner up last year in BBC2′s The Great British Bake Off.  Ruth’s baking recipes, mostly sweet but sometimes savoury have reignited my inner baker and inspired me to make cakes once again – something I used to do all the time when the children were small and before work got in the way.  Veronica on La Recette Du Jour is one of the few bloggers I have actually met and keeps a usefully searchable blog full of all sorts of delicious recipes – from there you can link to many other foodie bloggers, and Kath at The Ordinary Cook a recent discovery.  I do admire anyone who can cook lovely food AND take the time to photograph it and write about it!

My French favourites include Susie Kelly at No Damn Blog – Susie calls her blog a ‘pot pourri of observations and opinions’  which are often highly amusing and more often than not involve her faithful followers in follow up chats and comments.  Susie has recently published her fourth book ‘The Valley of Heaven and Hell – cycling in the shadow of Marie Antoinette’.  Sorry I’ve not yet read it, Susie, but if it’s as good as the others it won’t be long before I do.  Jon at The Vendee Blog is a witty observer of French life over there by the seaside amongst other things, and of course the diary of our good friends and neighbours at Les Poissons En France is one we visit regularly.

Jon is an avid follower of Police Inspector Blog so that he can remind himself on a daily basis why he is glad to have left the service himself and hit the quiet life in rural SW France.

There are beautiful photographs on The London Nature Photo Blog and if you like music – especially jazz, you might like to try the newest blog  All Jazz Cafe and be sure to click the link to download Steve’s podcast on iTunes – it’s free!

My thanks to Chris, on her crutches, for reminding me to go and have a look at some of my own favourite blogs past and present!

 

Reflections

Spring has arrived.  It’s official.  Shrubs are bursting with buds, plants we thought we had lost in the cold of winter are fighting their way into the light  -especially once I have pulled up a few weeds – we’re doing an especially good line in pissenlit this spring! – and ‘our’ deer have been grazing in the field.  Especially good news this morning is that I have spotted ‘our’ hare lolloping across the field into the copse.

We have just had a week of beautiful weather, chilly sometimes in the morning and cool enough in the evening to warrant a log fire – these thick stone walls take a long time to warm through from outside, but the days have been sunny and very warm.

Apart from Jon getting the lawn mown, we have been mostly working inside;, I have been decorating the spare bedroom while Jon has been finishing the end wall of the loft at last.  We couldn’t decide what to do with it but the stone work is so old and tatty up there that in the end we decided to hide most of it and finish the wall to match the others.  It’s already made a huge difference to the light up there and when I get on with ‘washing’ the wooden walls, it will be even lighter.

There are still many jobs to go on with.  Four years on and we’ve still lots of little projects, but hopefully the next couple of weeks will see us doing more outside than in.

We’ve also had a little time for reflection after our overseas trip.  High points and low points – not that there were many low points at all – the long flights, slightly uncomfortable but mostly just boring, despite Cathay Pacific’s excellent entertainment system.

High points were many.  Seeing friends and family of course, being by the sea of course, the apparently relaxed lifestyle in Australia and the bustle of Hong Kong.  Re-acquainting ourselves with Hong Kong places and seeing a few new ones; enjoying the buzz of Central, SoHo, Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok and the contrasting relaxed atmosphere of Lamma and Lantau.

Mui Wu village and Silvermine Bay, Lantau Island

 

We adored the East Coast of Australia, just the tiny amount of it that we explored, long quiet beaches, cliffs, country parks and small towns.  The only thing that surprised us was the long dark evenings – not the simple fact of them but the phenomenon on the campsites where people just disappeared after dark.  None of the convivial hum of people chatting, eating outside and generally being busy that we are used to after decades of camping in France.  Just a slow disappearance of people when the sun dropped from the sky.   Of course, most people weren’t doing as we were with the little house on wheels, no, the majority were grey nomads with enormous caravans complete with fully stocked fridge-freezers and satellite television – that’s probably what they were doing!  It seems to be a lifestyle choice rather than a holiday.

Many images will stay with us for years ahead, but here are just a very few of our favourites:

Karuah jetty

Seagull ballet - Noosaville

Wynnum Mangrove Reserve, Queensland

And of course ……….

A beautiful koala