Mainly domestic

 

Autumn is definitely here and very fancy opulent leaves are spreading themselves over the barn.  I am yearly amazed by this show. I don’t do anything at all to make it happen, though Karl, our friend who works like a human cannon ball and helps Mike with the garden, spent a little time earlier this year disposing of competing stuff.  He works so speedily, though,  he probably only took 10 minutes to do the job.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dog has had her first bath.  When she came to us last year, she refused the bath very strongly, but she has since taken to wading in rivers, streams and ponds (not swimming, paws have to be on the ground) so I thought she might be willing to finally try a tub soak.  And she was – took to it like a dog to water!  She has been scratching a lot lately and, as we couldn’t find any sign of fleas, mites or other pests, we thought it might be eczema.  So I carted her into the bath and sluiced her down with some fine beeswax soap which my sister, Helen, makes from the bees she keeps in her Leeds garden.  I do remember her saying it was good for skin complaints and Dolly gave every appearance of enjoying it.

 

Other than that, I have been making jam with figs picked from a huge tree belonging to our friends, the Roxburghs,   Roxburgh pears and our own apples; also a rather peculiar looking recipe which involved butternut squash, sugar and oranges.  The fig stuff is really good but I’m deeply uncertain about the orange squash business.  

 

Now that I live on the edge of a French village in the Dordogne, I jam-make, knit and sew – all activities I didn’t subscribe to in London, and was beginning to think that Mike was putting some sort of Stepford additive in my tea.   

 

 

My friend, Brenda, thinks we have become more domestic because there is a limited range of things to do down here.  Not much in the way of libraries – certainly no evening classes, swimming pool half an hour away and cinema at least three quarters of an hour.  Though there are meetings with friends and lunches and beautiful walks with the dog.  I also leap about and wave my arms rather foolishly at a Zumba class once a week – supposedly slower than the real thing and suited to oldies - Zumba for Golden Years.  And we organise quizzes to raise funds for Médecins Sans Frontières, a truly good cause. 

If I am becoming a Stepford wife, I am still rather feral.  The kitchen floor is habitually dirty.  I have rather given up on it.  The pot sink in the kitchen is very ancient and rather charming but, in line with its age, is also rather incontinent.  It  leaks water down the side of the drainer onto the floor.  Every time you do some task at the taps, water splashes under your feet and then wet foot marks follow – also paw marks if the dog is keeping you company.  I do make some effort but continual mopping is no fun.  If I can remember I may try spreading a towel on the floor before I do anything.  I could also make a lot more effort in the garden.  I instigated a herb bed when we first came here but weed it only spasmodically.  If it doesn’t rain, I might give it a go tomorrow.   I might also make an attempt to produce some marmalade, though that does look like a fiddly task.   Separating the peel from the pith looks no fun at all. 

 

After six years in France I finally have a French mobile phone.  The French rates used to be so expensive that it cost no more to use my English mobile.  But things are now changing thanks to EU rulings and the French rates are now cheaper.  I set up my new account on the internet and was asked to key in a pin number to use when I add credit to the account.  So I used numbers from my birth date.  “Never do that,” said a helpful friend, “It’s easy for other people to guess it”.  If anyone would like to break into my mobile account to add some credit to my phone, they are welcome.       

Memory - the griat bang theory

Jangling about in my head, alongside how to make bread , kedgerees,  a decent dhall, pin numbers, phone numbers,  my address, friend’s names and addresses and memories dating back to when I was about two,  I also carry a large collection of bizarre scraps, which switch themselves to replay from time to time, apparently independently of my will.  

About 20 years ago I worked in a legal office which dealt with insurance claims for a large van owning company.   All of the claims were based on accident reports filled in by the driver, and quite often the drivers were not good at filling the forms in.  My favourite stated

Cause of accident: Sudely a griat bang

Damage caused: Front front whee

What I was not expecting, though, was that this would pop into my head yesterday whilst Dolly and I were wandering behind Lake Cou Cou.  Not only did it pop, but if formed itself into a little song which went

Sudely a griat bang
Sudely a griat bang
Sudely a griat bang
And I hurt my front front whee
As everyone can see

Fortunately there was no-one else around at the time, other than the dog and a few sheep,  to hear me singing this pretty ditty.

 

Upsetting Dino Murby

 

Dino Murby, an aging and short legged dog, is visiting at the moment.  He is an easy guest – his main pleasures in life being eating and sleeping.  Much of the time he lies with his eye closed impersonating an elderly rug.  He also likes short walks.  I included him on an hour long trip the other day and, though he plodded on gamely, he panted so much that I spent the next 24 hours keeping an anxious watch, in case I’d brought on a heart attack.    Fortunately he has survived, but, so I don’t have to explain to Sue and Richard how I caused their dog’s death, I left him with Mike when I took Dolly for a longer walk yesterday.  And apparently he was extremely upset.   Once he realised that we had gone without him he stood in the kitchen howling . Mike had to spend a long time comforting him. Although it was flattering to be missed, Dolly will have to make do with short shared walks until Sue and Richard return. 

On Sunday I chopped up old cards.  I had a box containing all the birthday/Christmas/ congratulation/farewell cards we have received over the last 10 years.  I thought they might come in use for my grandsons for scrapbooking at some stage.  As they are now both too old to care about scrapbooks,  I spent several hours separating the pictures from the greetings to make new cards.  I consigned the discarded bits to the rubbish – thinking the recycling people wouldn’t want to pick their way through lots of bits of old card.  So this morning, the rubbish bag began to sing.  Somewhere from its black and mucky depths, it played “Happy Birthday” clearly and repeatedly.   Mike became very distressed.  I’m not sure whether he couldn’t stand the tune or whether he just wanted to retrieve the innocent card but he began to go through all the rubbish in a rescue attempt.  He found it.  It was right at the bottom.  He also rather smeared himself in jam.         

 

 

The View

We have a view!  I may have said this before but outside our bedroom window is a very small balcony.  Not large enough for lounging or breakfasting, it’s where we feed the birds.  When we first bought the house there was also a good view of the fields beyond.  But in the past year or so this has been obscured by the branches of an encroaching tree.  We’ve been undecided about having it lopped – in spite of our gaining a view of the fields and the night sky - would the birds still visit if they had no convenient branch to launch themselves from?  But then the tree grew a bit more and began tapping its branches on the roof.  Some of it had to go.  A splendid young couple arrived from near Thiviers the other day in a tree lopping van pulling a trailer.  And the job is now done.  The tree still stands but it has lost its power to block the view or harm the roof.  And the birds are still visiting.

I stood on my balcony in the evening air pretending to be Juliet.  “Close those windows,” called Romeo from below, “You'll let the moths in”.

Monday was my birthday and I was taken for a splendid lunch in Perigueux to a restaurant with a shaded garden, Le Clos St Front.  Our first visit, you eat in the garden on fine days under a canopy of green leaves. 

A bit like Jack Sprat and his wife, Mike is catholic with his wine drinking but  prefers red in the main, whilst I usually stick to white.  So if we’re having a splendid lunch, we opt for half a bottle of each.  And my half bottle of Sancerre was so beautifully golden and so delicious that it made me feel like never drinking any of the usual stuff again.  If I change my drinking habits I could forego the frequent glass or two of table wine or AOC over dinner and save all wine drinking for treats  – once a week, or even once a fortnight and then sit down with a half bottle of something expensive and divine.       

 

For Blighters Everywhere

I haven’t written anything here for ages, so this is a quick catch up.

I have just returned from my yearly fortnight in Scarborough sluicing out student property between lets.  Brenda Durham –small, kind, cheerful and packs a mean cleaning punch -  came with me.  For which I’m very grateful. 

In between sluicing we walked, ate curries and fish and chips and discovered real ale.  I’ve always been a wine woman but now wish you could get Copper Dragon Golden Pippin in France.  The Golden Pippin pub – the Leeds Arms had a report on the wall of how a Victorian landlord of the pub had had acid thrown at him by a vengeful lover.  She was heard to say, “Take that, you blighter,” as she did it.   

 

There were also various modern warnings and instructions scattered about - possibly influenced by the acid thrower’s spirit - warnings to blighters everywhere.

 

   

   

Scarborough is still an eccentric place.  There’s band music most days in the open air by the Spa.  Pensioners pay to sit in deck chairs and listen.  I don’t understand where all these people are coming from.  They must have been relatively young in the 60s! 

 

I too am a pensioner but have no wish to sit in a deckchair by Scarborough Spa.  A friend of mine once tried to sit in a deck chair out of season when he thought there was nothing going on.  A man came up to him and said, “It’s 50p if you want the organ to start”.  What’s to say?

One afternoon we took a trip a few miles up the coast to Ravenscar.  George III was kept at Raven Hall in his mad periods by a doctor who had written permission to beat the king if he gave trouble, or behaved like a blighter.  Raven Hall is now a hotel and we sat with tea and cake and gaped at the view.

 

 

It’s good to be back home, though, and the dog is ecstatic to be taking long walks out again.  And the countryside is still beautiful.

 

Yesterday Mike and I went shopping in Grand Frais in Perigueux, my favourite vegetable shop in the world.  The French are wonderful at  displaying fruit and veg.  



Even though some of their foreign product names are a trifle eccentric.

 

 

I may buy these as Christmas gifts for friends.  "Take that, you blighters," I will say.

Hail storms, trains and thieves

Sometimes there is nothing worth writing about and sometimes there is too much.  And we have been going through a too much period.   I did manage to take photographs but now the camera is playing up and everything appears lost.

Derek and James, the men with the broken down car, repaired themselves and arrived on a very hot Thursday.   Friday was equally hot and we sat on the terrace in the evening watching the sun go down.  First the thunder arrived, then flashes of multi coloured lightning.  Before it got ominous it was startlingly pretty.  Thankfully we were inside by the time the spectacular hail storm arrived.   Enormous hail stones, the size of large golf balls, flew from the sky with the force of bullets.  Cringing inside, under siege, we expected the windows to shatter at any moment.  

It didn’t last long but, after the onslaught, we found a devastated garden full of broken branches and tiles.  An outside plastic table had large holes bored through it and many roof tiles had been snapped in half.   There were also dents in Derek and Mike’s cars.   We are less badly affected than some of our neighbours.  Whereas our roof tiles are the old Dordogne overlapping ones and have been snapped in two at the overlap, with no leakage to the house, others have had holes bored in their roofs and some have had windows and car windscreens shattered.   Everyone is calling for “bache” – sheets of tarpaulin used to cover ruined roof tops.  The job of covering the roofs has been assigned to the pompiers, who were working flat out taking bache from one house to another and now say they have run out of money. (Hope they don’t do this in the middle of major fires).  M Bougeaud, a local roofer, retired last year and passed the business on to his son.  He is now back at work, dealing with the clamour on his business.   Insurance companies have been telling people they can get estimates from roofers up to 100 kms away.   

Generally, people are being wonderful. The mayor has issued a special bulletin offering help to anyone afflicted and listing all the local roofers and workmen with their contact details.   Neighbours have called, to see if we are okay.  Mike’s telephone services are in demand among some of our English neighbours as his French is so fluent.  It’s really not easy having telephone conversations in a foreign language.   

In spite of all this, Mary Rogers and I had arranged to go to Paris for the night on Tuesday.  Mary is racing round Africa in a truck next month and needed a Mozambique visa.  A visit to the Embassy seemed a safer bet than a postal request.  We got to Paris safely on the train from Limoges. (This is the line that had a spectacular crash with fatalities last month so we thought we had done well).  We negotiated the replacement bus service from Austerlitz to Bastille, that metro line being out.  We’re not used to Paris so were still doing well.  It was after Mary stuck her card into a machine and bought us 10 metro tickets that things started to go wrong.  The metro line was very very crowded. Even at past 10 in the morning it was more like a rush hour service.   Halfway to our destination, with the crowd thinning out, a man helpfully pointed out that Mary’s passport was lying on the floor.  It transpired that the reason it was lying on the floor was that someone had unzipped the little belt she was wearing and removed her credit cards. Possibly the same someone had also unzipped the front pocket of my wheelie case and removed my kindle.    Not nice. 

We are brave women, though.  We continued.  Mary  got her visa.  We spent an afternoon and evening in Montmartre and another afternoon wandering by the Seine.  We found restaurants and ate too many things.  It poured with rain on Wednesday.  We still had a good time.

Mary subsequently found that whoever lifted the credit cards has managed to also lift a great deal of money which she doesn’t have from her account.  We hope giant hail stones land on his head. The bank is supposed to return the money.  It bloody better.

       

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

Shifting

We have been moving furniture.  This, for Mike, is very anxiety inducing.  Many men don’t like furniture to be moved, treating it as a kind of bereavement.  My husband belongs to this number, so, when I first broached the subject, he put his head in his hands and moaned softly.    I think he also rocked a little but I couldn’t swear to it.   I, on the other hand, am a rearranger.  Left to my own devices and given a fellow shifter to grab the other end, I would move beds, tables and chairs around on a regular basis.  We compromise by shifting a lot less than I would like and more than is pleasing to Mike.

But having a table next to the armoire looks lovely.   And Mike’s study is really improved by bringing the green coffee table from the barn and moving the large dining table out.  Also one of the spare bedrooms is much better with two single beds, than with a double and a single. 

I am seriously considering not providing my guests with the option of a double bed.  The two spare bedrooms are too small for doubles anyway.  So any guest couples feeling particularly amorous could squash up together or be creative with floor space.  But this will mean disposing of the double bed in the other small spare room and replacing it with a single.  And Mike’s head might fall off.

We hopefully have guests arriving tomorrow, though not amorous ones.  Derek and Jo (married) were due to come down with their friend, James.  Jo, though, has had to stay home for many urgent reasons, and Derek and James visited Normandy and were coming on to us, but their car broke down last night.  We seem to have failed to make proper sacrifices to the God of the Visit.   Our last lot of expected guests were detained by air strikes.  Derek and James are still hoping to get to us tomorrow, though.

In the meantime, our main visitors continue to be bugs and the odd mouse.  We found a very tiny mouse staggering around in the kitchen the other day.  Mice would generally be given short shrift but this one was so young it didn’t have its eyes open.  Mike, the friend of all creatures, tried to feed it with diluted milk and tiny scraps of muesli but it died overnight. 

 

 

 

At the moment the weather is hot, but until Monday it was very very hot.  The dog and I didn’t walk but sloped off to the river in the afternoons.  I read and swam and she soaked herself in the water up to her neck.  She is a deep paddling dog but not a swimming one – she likes to feel river bottom under her paws.   

 

  

 

 

 

  

 

        

 

 

 

 

This Week

A lot has happened this week.  I didn’t mention it before –I was too preoccupied with the dog flying but we have been living under blue skies and a shimmering sun, eating most meals out  on the terrace.

Jean-Jacques, our friendly farmer, turned up to cut the grass.  It’s a good barter system.  He cuts our two meadows twice a year, bales up the cut grass to feed to his cattle in winter and we have short grass at no cost.  He announced to Mike that his wife had left him and taken the two children with her.  “Oh, dear,” said Mike, “You’ll miss them”.  “Not really,” said Jean-Jacques, “It was all getting very difficult and I like the quiet”.    He seemed cheerful enough and the fields look lovely.

 

I was sitting at the computer the other day when I heard a loud buzzing.  Bizarrely, it seemed to be coming from behind a picture of a dragon, embroidered by my mother.  After a while I realised that a thin kind of wasp was occasionally appearing from behind the picture, flying out of the window and then returning.   When all the buzzing had died down I risked a look and realised that three thin wasps were attempted to build a home behind the picture.  There were two closed cells there and one still open. 

 

 

I don’t know whether wasps have any kind of class system, with an indoor picture home being preferable to an outdoor one, but I was not allowing this to happen so carried the picture carefully downstairs and outside.  “Don’t hurt them,” said Mike, the Bug Champion, gently scraping the cells into a flower pot on the side of the terrace.  A little later a thin wasp entered the house clutching something in its mouth and flapped around for a while where the picture had been.  It must have been intended for the third cell – like Harry Lime.   Their buzzing is a little like zithers playing.

Incidentally, Mike has asked me to say that he does not treat bugs better than people.  So I am saying it.  But I think he is in denial.

Wednesday this week we ran a charity quiz night for Médecins Sans Frontières.   Anne Ingham organized the quiz, I did most of the cooking, Brenda Durham was room arranger, food transporter, cleaner and mopper upper.  She also did sterling work on the washing up with Pamela Roxburgh, who also served food and chopped up vegetables.  Paula Taylor Moore made delicious lemon tarts and Mike ran the bar and took the entrance money.  

 

I always panic at these things – I made cheesy biscuits to start and then paella and worried that people wouldn’t like it, or that the rice would stick together, or that the rice would cool down too soon and kill everyone.  I only made the paella as I thought that one dish would be simple, but then started getting orders for “no seafood/no meat/no meat or seafood”.  But it all went well.  43 people turned up in good temper and brought donations for a raffle.  They enjoyed the quiz, ate up the paella and even asked for seconds.  We made 570 euros for MSF but there are no photos of the night.  I was too busy.

Finally, we have a new dish washing mop.  He is a little like poor Camille, the last mop, but has no face – just bright red hair.  He is also very tough - not an intellectual revolutionary but a faceless assassin.  I think the Hasidim may have included a sect of red headed assassins but I’m not certain.  In view of this and to encourage him not to lose his head, I shall call him Aaron.  I took him to the quiz night and he worked hard.          

 

 

 

Flying

 

 

Early yesterday evening I was lounging in the first floor sitting room trying to catch up with The Borgias.  It's been a busy week and I had wanted to swim in the river but the weather was thick and heavy as though a storm was coming.  So I chose The Borgias instead.   I could hear the dog moving about above me in one of the second floor bedrooms and Cesare Borgia’s man, Migoletto, was just murdering the King of Naples by pushing him in a pond of lampreys.   Suddenly the most awful thing happened – much worse than the lampreys.  Just as they were heaving the murdered king back to his castle, the dog flung herself from a second floor window and hurtled past me head first, heading groundward.   I made a kind of horrible wailing noise – I certainly howled for Mike, who was resting in the bedroom, then staggered downstairs and outside.  I knew I had to get to her but didn’t want to look.  It’s stony immediately outside our house and I was expecting a dead dog – or one that was horribly wounded.  But she wasn’t there.  There was no dog and no blood or hair or broken bits of dog to be seen. 

We started the search for her, calling and shouting and scouring.  There was no barking or whining or response.  “I think she has gone somewhere quiet to die,” I said, becoming increasingly frantic at the thought of a hidden, desperately hurt dog.   We looked behind things and under things, in the barn, through the fields, down by the river,  across the orchard.   Mike drove off to search the village.  “She may have staggered down the road,” he said.  “She could be disorientated.”  I refused to go with him, in case she came home. 

So I was alone when I looked one more time in the wood barn.  And I found her.  She likes it in there, just inside the door - it’s cool and shady.  But this time she had clambered over piles of knobbly chopped up wood and got as far to the back of the barn as possible.  She looked at me and wagged her tail and I climbed over piles of knobbly chopped up wood to get to her.   I don't go in the wood barn much - I’m always afraid of snakes.  Snakes might like it there.   Dolly was pleased to see me.  She got up and walked around and did a bit of wagging and a bit of licking.  And there was nothing wrong with her.  Not a break or a scratch – not even a falter.  I’ve still got bruised legs from slipping on the kitchen floor last week but my dog appears to be indestructible.   She just wants to go somewhere dark and quiet when the weather gets stormy and is perfectly willing to leap out of second floor windows to get there.          

 

Birds and stars (and bugs)

Mike is doorman for the bugs, mice and slugs that enter our house.  He is very fond of them.    I have heard him having kindly conversations with hard backed beetles as he gently ushers them out.   This morning I noticed a very large grasshopper lying on the bedroom floor and requested its eviction.  Mike came upstairs, stared at it briefly and then accusingly at me.  “It’s injured,” he said, “What have you done to it?  You must have trodden on it.”   (I didn’t).  He carried it lovingly to the window.   As he is kinder to bugs than he is to human visitors, perhaps I should suggest that my friends dress in green and wear antennae (or wings).

Summer view from the bedroom window

One of the reasons that our bedroom has good bug access is that there is a large tree outside the back window.  When we first bought the house, we had a perfect view of the night sky but now this is obscured by ever lengthening branches.   I can only glimpse the odd summer star by bending almost in half and contorting my neck.  And, as I like opening the windows in fine weather, it’s just a hop and a skip for little bugs to come visiting.   We are undecided about branch lopping as this could lose us the birds that gather on the tree to visit our window bird feeder.  Birds or stars, birds or stars – there’s a quandary.

Winter bedroom window view

I did an afternoon in the charity shop in St Yrieix on Tuesday.  I keep meaning to give it up, but it’s good for me.  It’s one of the few places I have to speak French.  Tuesday was very hot and we had a heavy influx of wounded people, not well enough to go swimming at the lake or walking in the countryside.  We were handed a large clothes donation, including packets of free socks that are handed out on aeroplane journeys, by a man in a neck brace.  Then we had a nice man who had had a stroke, followed by a very small woman wearing trousers with a waistline about 6 inches too big for her.  “I’ve lost weight,” she said, “I’ve been ill” and told tales of abandonment, cruelty and betrayal.   She did find some trousers that would fit and also a belt to hold up the ones that won’t so I hope life is improving for her. 

The strangest customer, though, was a woman who spoke little but had very staring eyes and kept opening and shutting her mouth like a goldfish.   Maybe it’s the heat.



Down river


 The best thing about the weather is that Mike and I have been able to launch our canoe.  This was a new purchase earlier this year but the river has been too rain filled to attempt a jaunt.  We did try it out once but were unable to get past a sort of mill race that thunders by us when the river is full.  Mike screamed instructions a lot and we waved oars and bickered.  So this week’s canoe ride was wonderful.  There is nothing, really nothing, as nice as gently paddling down a Dordogne river surrounded by birds and trees and reflected light.

 

 

 

 

Lost in France

The weather has suddenly improved.  We have had three days in a row of blue skies and bright sunlight and it is as hot as holidays.  Dolly and I celebrated by getting lost in Grange d’Ans on Friday.  There are two Grange d’Ans walks marked on the map from the tourist office – Grange d’Ans Nord and Grange d’Ans Sud.  We have already done the Nord one so we were trying out the one to the Sud.  These walks have helpful little yellow markers to direct your path.  Either the markers ran out or we missed one.  Following the rainy season, every bit of bud and blossom has grown so tall that it is possible that a marker was hidden under leaves.  Trustingly, I had not bought a map.  So we were lost and bamboozled.    I did try to retrace our steps, but our steps had been so varied that that wasn’t any help either. 

 Lots and lots of beautiful countryside spread out in all directions round us without a signpost and hardly a road to steer by.  Occasionally we came upon a hamlet of four or five houses, but saw no-one about to ask the way.  French villages often appear very deserted at all times of the day.  I finally found an old man in a beret and a thick blue work shirt leaning against a barn.   “La direction de Grange d’Ans?” I said politely.  “Uggh?” he replied.  So I repeated my question and he said, “Uggh?” again.  I was so desperate by this time that I had a third go at it.  “Aah,” he said, “La Grange!” and he pointed to the right.  I had this trouble with an old woman in Grange d’Ans the last time I was here.  Unless you can pronounce things like a child born in the area, they cannot understand you.  And it isn’t called La Grange, it’s called Grange d’Ans – or at least it is on the map and the road signs.  I’ve been wearing a pedometer on these walks and we’d done 8 kilometres in the heat by the time we got back to the car.  Dolly was so pleased to collapse in the shade that I had some trouble dragging her onto the back seat for the journey home.

Together with our friends, Mike and Kerstin Wood, Mike and I were responsible for setting a quiz on Tuesday.  Mike did one round consisting entirely of 30 sports questions and someone remarked that they didn’t know he was so interested in sport.  Interested is  too weak a word.  He loves all sports.  We were out to lunch today with our friends, Mary and Alan Rogers and others, when Mike suddenly rose up and said he must be going as he had to get back in time to see the Wimbledon Men’s Finals.  He wanted to watch it in the privacy of our house where he could shout, swear and encourage with gusto.   Anyway, Andy Murray has now won and all the British can be very happy, especially the Scottish British. Mike is delighted.    

  

 

Washing up brushes and more

Used and abused
 

We have a serious problem with the Manly Washing up Brush.  The change in him is terrible.   When he first entered our house he was bright and cheerful. A few sessions in warm soapy water eradicated most of his face, and now his head has fallen off.  I think maybe he had a spiritual connection with a decapitated French revolutionary; he bore a slight resemblance to Camille Desmoulins.  Mike is going to attempt to glue him back together again but I am not hopeful.  Mike said he was not efficient at washing up, anyway, having rather soft bristles, but I had no quarrel with poor Camille.

As he was

 



Camille Desmoulins

I have slandered my husband.  Some time ago, I lost a knitting needle.  This was annoying as it was one of a pair that I was knitting something with.  I searched all around the area I had been knitting, fruitlessly.    I then saw Mike attempting to work on a small lawn mower trailer, which was ordered over the internet and arrived in bits as a put it together yourself project.   He was using a knitting needle to line up three metal bits through three central holes.   It was the same size as my missing needle and was also made of bamboo. I demanded return of it straightway and, though he handed it over, he insisted that it was not my needle but one he had had in a tool drawer for some time.   I suggested he pull the other one.  Now, this morning, I pulled out the settee to hoover behind it and there, in a very unexpected corner, was my missing needle.  My pulling out the settee to hoover behind it doesn’t happen very often, though.   I have returned the other needle to the tool drawer and will apologise.

 As anyone reading this may gather, not a great deal has happened this week.  We have been out to lunch twice, once with the Book Club and once with the Lunch Club and I have, as usual,  done a lot of dog walking.  Paula Taylor Moore and I managed 10 kilometres with three dogs round Tourtoirac on Thursday and felt very virtuous and tired by the end of it. 

Lunch Club - Hautefort

The weather is very mixed – one sunny day rapidly followed by a chilly, cloudy one and lots of rain.  This is very good for the crops, though not much fun for the humans.

 

 

 

 

 

We have a new lawn mower which, thankfully, arrived in one piece. 
 

 

Edward Snowden is still accused of espionage.  40 years ago, when Nixon had to resign as US president, when it was found that he had had the Democrat Headquarters bugged.  Those that did the bugging were convicted of crimes and Bernstein and Woodward, who broke the story, were hailed as heroes.  Nowadays it’s the opposite way round.  There’s no question of Obama resigning and Snowden is under threat of jail.  I do hope he gets to safe haven.