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.