Long time no post

Ooops, I didn’t see the time fly at all. An occupational hazard of getting older perhaps?

Recent highlights include very, very hot weather which has now turned into cold and damp.

Dom came to stay for one night as she had a conference in Poitiers. We do appreciate the extra travelling she did to be with us for a few hours. While she was here she rescued a baby hedgehog that was determined to walk in the middle of the road and a stag beetle that had managed to turn onto his back and couldn’t right himself. She also brought chocolate from England and some delicious Madelines from Poitiers.

New grandpuppy

Christian and J have a new puppy. Isn’t he gorgeous? He’s a Jack Chi and very small. So now I have two grandchildren. We won’t be meeting him until the end of May.

Death and destruction

I can’t believe that time has gone so quickly – again!

We had a bit of an adventure last weekend. On Saturday, I was sat at my computer and looked over to the farmyard across the road to see that there was a dog attacking the hens! I went across straight away to see if the farmer was there – he wasn’t (the windows of his house don’t face the yard where the hens roam). So I headed for the piece of land he has behind the town hall. On the way a man in a car stopped and asked if I’d seen a husky dog so I told him yes, the dog was in with the hens. In the meantime, Rob was shouting from the office window to try to distract the dog and saw that the man had difficulty trying to call the dog, the dog ran off down the road.

We saw the farmer on Sunday morning and told him what we had seen. The dog killed 6 hens. Anyway, because of this, I found out what kind of hens they are: Poules de Maron. They are very special hens that lay “golden“eggs

   

Image from Wikipedia

 I’ve seen the farmer since then and the dog owner hasn’t been back to apologise.

Geese

This morning a flock of geese flew over. I heard them before I saw them, flying in the clear blue sky in a ‘V’ formation.

All of a sudden I was transported back to over 30 years ago when I lived on the farm. Flocks of geese would arrive to make short work of the new shoots of wheat. Come harvest time there would be quite a bald patch in the corner of the field. I used to go out for a walk with my collie, Elkie. Although she wasn’t trained to herd sheep, she definitely had the herding instinct and would go down onto her tummy and shuffle silently towards the geese. Then she would wait for my command, struggling to stop her tail wagging. “Sedemoff!” (send them off) meant that she had permission to rush at them barking and they would rise into the air, a noisy cloud of surprised geese.

For a little while I had a lump in my throat, Elkie is long gone, the farm is no longer a farm and I live in a different country.

Mmmmoo!

I just don’t know what to say about this milk bottle label. I grew up on a farm and I like cows, but sexy?

Ahhhh time

One of Rob's colleagues sent me this:

Cat on a boat plays with dolphins

Third Forth time lucky

Since Friday I’ve been trying to write a post about our visit to Tours last Thursday. I’ve finished the first sentence a couple of times only to be interrupted by major events like tea making or urgent ironing..

Anyway, we went to Tours for the viewing of an upcoming auction. This time we took an earlier train so that we could explore the historic part of the town during the morning. We weren’t disappointed. It’s lovely. We had a great lunch too, a little way from the very touristy part – which just seems to be restaurants and very crowded when we went back later. During the afternoon we went off to the viewing. Lots of good postcards and albums, it was hard to prepare a list, if only we could afford to buy all of them.

The best part came afterwards. We had a little time left before the train home and wondered through a little park. My attention was drawn by a huge cedar tree. Just like the one in Nimes. The cedar tree in Tours is just over two hundred years old and needs a bit of support, but is magnificent nonetheless. Rob called me over to see a poster on the wall. It was Fritz! I’d forgotten that I was intending to find out where Fritz was. When I finished reading the poster I turned around and there he was, on display. Fritz was big as elephants go. The link to my post about him, explaining his sad story with a picture is at the bottom.

When I’d finished admiring him it was time to get the train. It wasn’t too crowded, but we were still glad to be liberated at la Rochelle station. Just as we came out of the station my phone rang. Dom phoned to give me her news about what a lovely time she was having in Chicago. She was making useful contacts and her work has been appreciated by the right people. She’s got some pictures of some paintings by Monet which are in a gallery somewhere in Chicago, but I’ll probably have to wait until after her trip to England to see them. She remembered my copy of the Chicago Sun Times.. we talked for five minutes.

Since then she’s confirmed she got home safely on Saturday. I expect she’s dealing with the effects of jetlag as I write.

Now all I have to do is find the time to get this posted to my blog and wait to see if our bids were accepted. (It was then time to go for a walk so I had to wait yet again – hopefully I can do it now)

Cedar tree image

Cedar tree in Nimes

Fritz

Read to the end before clicking on the links...

I have eaten horse meat.

As an ex vegetarian I think that if you are going to eat one animal, then why not another? We had horse steaks while visiting friends in the North of France 25 years ago. They did ask us if we minded first and as far as I remember I’d rather eat beef. When we first came to live in the village there was a horse butcher who came to the village on Saturday mornings and the local supermarkets sold horse meat too. Then a lot of people became ill after eating diseased meat. The problem being that in France people prefer their meat underdone. Someone is supposed to have calculated you could get 1000 portions from one horse (different cuts of meat, sausage, offal, black pudding and so on) Since those days the horse butcher stopped coming round and the local supermarkets stopped selling the meat too.

I though that the practise had died out… This afternoon I was shocked to read A Taste of Garlic which contains a link to a post about the way that some horses are treated. I’m not sure whether they are all bound for the abattoir or not. Do not follow the link from his site if you are easily upset.

I’d just like to point out that most French people are just as horrified at the ill treatment of animals as everyone else.

Nature Notes

Spring has certainly sprung here now and today was quite hot. The other day while walking through the park I saw a squirrel run up a tree. He was so confused by the mowers and tree surgeons that he didn’t notice me.

The flock magpies which were at the side of the marsh seem to have disappeared. I noticed that someone had been putting maize down, whether they were feeding them or poisoning them, I don’t know. We haven’t seen any dead birds around and there was a notice on one of the huts by the shore not to leave food for animals or birds (there is a colony of wildcats there too – if they survived the flooding a month or so back). The magpies aren’t so present in the gardens across the road either. It looks as if the jays they chased away last spring have made a comeback.

The most exciting event to report is that when Rob and I were coming home from a walk the other day along the side of the marsh a water rat European Water Vole swam up the stream alongside us for quite a way. We were talking as usual but it didn’t frighten him/her off. I was wondering if it could be a beaver, but a dive into the water showed off a ratty tail

This morning when I opened the kitchen shutters I almost stepped on a toad. He was very still (pretending to be a stone) and stared at me.

Now you must go and see the adorable, furry, bundles of fun that Mary Lou is babysitting at the moment.

Dark and gloomy and a glimmer of hope.

As the roads of France are blocked with cars either coming or going on holiday it is a very dark and dull Sunday morning. Dom went to the mountains with her boyfriend mid-week. They went on the night train which reminded me one of my favourite Alfred Hitchcock films; North by Northwest. I wonder if she managed to sleep?

Talking of sleep, or lack of it, none of us slept very well last night. Rob got up at five to start work on the postcards. He sent off an email for confirmation of an auction we’re interested in and our ‘expert’ replied almost straight away (someone else who had difficulty sleeping perhaps?) Olivier got in at 5 too and when I got up myself just before 7 I could hear his TV so I went in to turn it off and he was awake and watching the news. He’s got to get up at 10.30 to got to work – I can see we’re in for a struggle this morning.

On Friday evening I got a message from Google every time I tried to visit a blogspot blog using Firefox. It told me that my computer was sending out multiple requests. When I tried using AOL (or whatever it is called nowadays) I had no problems. Yesterday morning I managed to pick up three Trojan horses – there seem to be a lot of problems around at the moment.

Finally on a feel good note, I’m linking to a YouTube video as I don’t like to put up screens in every post. A dog rescuing another dog. You might have seen it already. Am I loony for saying it restores your faith in human nature when you see something nice like this happening.?

Double take

The coots are still on the marsh which is well flooded at the moment. I haven't seen any sign of the mice. Did they listen to my advice about moving out?

Oh, I almost forgot; I saw a dodo. I was surprised to discover on Wikipedia that the last known stuffed Dodo was discarded in 1755. As you can see, if you follow the link, they are wrong. Perhaps I should write to them....