Took the dogs for their run yesterday evening. Two things happened.

First, I bashed my toe really, really hard against a partially submerged rock. I was wearing WOZ (French version of Crocs, but made of a sort of reinforced polystyrene material - extraordinarily comfortable). They proved no match for that particular rock, and two things happened: an excrutiating pain (the kind that makes you instantly foul-mouthed), and a sinister snapping sound. Because we were only at the beginning of the walk, I decided to wait until we returned home before examining the damage, so stoically I continued for another mile, keeping the anguished toe pointing upwards and walking on my heel, wiping little involuntary tears from my cheeks.

Then the second (of the first two things) happened. I noticed, shortly, that the dogs had disappeared. They do that, but normally reappear within a couple of minutes. Only this time they didn’t. Having reached the end of the path, I turned for home, and whistled. Nothing. I met a group of walking ladies, who had not seen two large dogs, but were rather anxious that they might encounter them, despite my assurances that both were harmless.

Still walking with my strange gait, still whistling, I was relieved when after about half an hour, Dobbie galloped up, heaving and panting, tongue lolling. But no sign of Tally. Maybe he was already home. But no, he wasn’t, and that was very odd, because he knows that end of walk = dinner, and he is the most gluttonous creature I’ve ever known.

Leaving Dobbie slurping water and munching his food, I took the car to look for Tally. Because of his vile and depraved eating habits (recently the whole body of a dead cat that he found), he wears a soft nylon muzzle that prevents him opening his mouth wide enough to get anything in, while still leaving room for him to breathe. I was starting to worry that the muzzle had become entangled and he was trapped somewhere. It was an immense relief when he came racing up to the car, and I opened the door so he could leap in. But on my God, what a stink! He had obviously been down in the reeds and was covered in a thick, greenish-brown slime, which he shook jubilantly all over the car, and all over me.

After we’d both showered, and I’d fed him, I had time to examine the squealing foot. It doesn’t look too good: a sticky-up hard lump at the base of my big toe, with bruising emerging all round. It hurts, too. Still, it’s lucky really, because it’s my left foot, and I’m right-footed, so I can still walk.

What do you have on the walls in your work space?

Being very easily distracted, I limit myself to six items at a time.

Currently, there are:

This small sketch bought in a junk shop 10 years ago, for 5 francs.  It’s signed by P Sulpis, and dated 1914. He’s called it  “Riva  Bella.” It’s mostly in black crayon, apart from a touch of pink flushing the girl’s cheek, and her lips are red. Looking at it, I wonder - who was the artist? Did he draw from imagination, or from life? Was the subject a real person, or a dream? It’s a summertime scene; war came to France at the beginning of August. Was it painted before war broke out, or afterwards? That’s what I like about it - the unanswered questions.

Then there’s this newly-found photo of my mother.

Friends for 55 years. Dear old Madame Grimaud, who died earlier this year, photographed in her garden with Madame Nextdoor about 15 years ago. Look at the way Madame Nextdoor has her arm around her friend’s shoulder.

Three greetings cards that still make me laugh:

Tell me what you look at in your workspace.

Fascinating data they may reveal, but is it acceptable to put human remains on display to the public? I really don’t think so. While digging up coffins, opening tombs and unwrapping mummies does give us a valuable insight into how these people lived and died, I do feel that once the scientists have finished their investigations, the remains should be reburied in a dignified manner, and not used as objects of entertainment. Surely the dead deserve to be left to rest in peace.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4380291.ece

When you consider the great lengths that were taken to ensure the eternal and undisturbed rest of the Pharaohs, those who decided to smash their way into the tombs regardless deserved every single nasty repercussion that came their way. How would those grave robbers have felt if their own ancestors had been dug up and messed around with?

If you planted some radish seeds, and they grew into big, pink, juicy radishes, would you expect another planting, three weeks later, using seeds from the same packet, and planting them into the same earth, beside the original crop, to grow equally well?

Well, mine didn’t. Instead of radishes I raised a crop of tall leaves ending in long, thin pink roots.

Mr Nextdoor has been growing his own vegetables for over six decades, so I went to ask him where I had gone wrong.

His explanation: seeds cannot flourish unless they are planted at the correct phase of the moon. The second planting of radishes was doomed to failure because I had not taken this into account.

Well, as there doesn’t seem to be any other explanation, I have to believe that he is correct.

Which makes me wonder why seed packets do not contain this vital information. It’s not enough to say “plant from May to August”. The EU should bring in a law - they’re quite good at that - making it a legal requirement for seed sellers to give clear directions as to which moon phase will make their seeds flourish.

It’s harvest time. God, it seems to have arrived quickly. Only a few weeks ago the fields were scruffy expanses of clumps of red earth, weeds and dead vegetation. Then the tractors passed, first turning the soil, then harrowing it into a fine tilth. They passed again, sowing seeds, and within days the first greenish flush arrived, turning in the blink of an eye to foot high daggers. In no time at all the oil seed rape had flowered, faded and withered; the wheat had turned from green to golden, as had the lush grass which has now been transformed into fields of cow cocoons. Of the rape seed only the stalks remain, still defiantly erect. The grains of wheat are on their way by trailer to the local co-operative mills, and their stalks lie in ragged trails on the ground, waiting to be baled into straw.

Combine harvesters, as big as hotels, snort through the countryside slicing, chewing, churning, spitting out and funnelling, while the shoulder-high maize and first sunflowers watch complacently. Poor things have no idea that quite soon they too will meet their brutal end.

A neighbour was describing the traditional harvest, once a communal activity, before the advent of mechanisation.  Then it was a time of hard, happy work, neighbour helping neighbour; al fresco meals, aching bones but light hearts and the satisfaction of seeing the result of their work. I nodded, and said what a pity it was that the combines had replaced the horse and oxen in the fields. They nodded. We all agreed that there is little romance left in farming.

Mind you, they pointed out, those horses and oxen lived a hard life. How many kilometers did they have to walk each day, as they dragged heavy ploughs up and down fields? Heh, eight hours a day, in all weathers. It wasn’t easy - especially if you were the one walking behind them.

Strangely, this is something I had never previously considered. And I suppose that if you had spent long hours either swallowing dust, or trudging along in boots caked with mud, with nothing but animals’ bottoms to look at, farming didn’t seem any more romantic than it does today.

Recently, in a cobwebby cupboard I found the plastic bag containing a pile of papers given to me by my grandmother, and which I have never closely examined before. Some of them date back to 1752 - various birth and marriage certificates, and one giving the Freedom of the City of London to a certain Joshua Frost. Also the admission cards for my great-grandfather to Westminster Abbey for the coronations of Edward VII in 1902, and George V in 1911. Great Grandpa was a chorister in the Abbey.

Also with the papers was a bible presented to Great Grandpa - Sidney Herbert Parry - in 1883. Within the bible my grandmother had put an envelope, which I had looked at once before - it contained two locks of my mother’s hair from when she was a baby. I took them out again and found something I had never seen before - a small photograph of my mother.

Now, I do have a few other photos of her, some very formal, and others showing her as the mother of other children - a little boy who died before I was born, and my half-sister, born years after Mummy went away. What I didn’t have was a photo of her as I remembered her when she was my mother.

If she had not been killed in 1967, by a careless driver, she would have been 90 this year, and I would have had more recent photos. But as it is, this is how I remember her, and how I can now see her whenever I want to. I find this so miraculous and unexpected that I can hardly believe it.

Mummy

The new neighours returned to England today.

Euphoria; ecstasy; jubilation; exultation and rapture - words that inadequately describe our relief.

O.K. That’s cruel and mean. Sorry, Richard. Please forgive me. An evil homunculus took me in its grip and made me do it.

For the benefit of anybody who is not Richard, I’ll explain.

We sold our gîte, which is very close to, and facing our house, a little over two years ago. It was a decision we anguished over, being rather protective of our own small corner of paradise, but we were lucky enough to find buyers who made perfect neighbours, and are very nice folk, too. You might be able to imagine our horror when they decided, for personal reasons to sell - and no, I don’t think, and certainly don’t hope, that it was anything we said or did .

What kind of new neighbours might we have? The mind ran riot, as minds tend to do, and mentally we were already on the move.

But the winds of fate were kind, and brought Richard and Linda, to whom we took an immediate liking which seems to be reciprocated. They are fun, friendly, interesting and animal lovers, so very much our kind of people. Richard and I share a mild interest in words, too.

It doesn’t end there, though. Two doors away more new neighbours arrived about three months ago. Because it’s Sunday, and because I’m feeling uncharacteristically charitable, I’ll only say of the previous owner of their house that there was general and unseemly rejoicing when he left, tempered with apprehension as to what his replacement might be like. We drew up a mental drawbridge, dug a virtual moat and prepared for the worst.

We couldn’t have been wronger. They are absolutely delightful, great sense of humour, always cheerful, and with a beautiful horse with whom, when I am missing ours, I can have a little chat.

How lucky can you get?

Location, location, location might be all-important to some, but for us it’s neighbours, neighbours, neighbours every time. And that’s why we are feeling that enormous sigh of relief. :-) 

.. quite an appropriate title, don’t you think? I am referring to Amanda Platell’s article on the “vile Max Mosley”: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1034495/Its-vile-Max-Mosleys-wife-I-feel-sorry-for.html.

She took the thoughts and words right out of my head. What a selfish, egotistical prick the man is.

From my mother I inherited a fairly good pair of legs. They have served me well for many decades. If they could be said to have a flaw, it isn’t cellulite, but colour. Not 20 years of Kenyan sunshine, nor three weeks on a Greek island could give them a golden hue. They can be either maggot-white, or boiled prawn pink.

In celebration of the now-almost arrived summer, I chose to wear a short skirt when we went to friends for dinner during the week. It was far too hot for tights, so I resorted to the spray tan. After spraying evenly and thoroughly, I wandered into the kitchen for a cup of tea while waiting for the spray to dry.

This was a mistake. To our cats, footsteps in the kitchen can mean just one thing: food. Faster than a fast thing, they thundered up to me and wound themselves lovingly, several times, around my still-wet legs.

Damn! Now weird patterns would ruin the bronze effect, so back I went to the bathroom for a respray.  But - the accumulation of product became too heavy, and began to swiftly trickle down my legs and into my Crocs, where it formed sticky puddles. I could not remove the shoes because our tiled floor is lethal when wet, and it would be a pity to break a leg and have a plaster cast hiding its golden splendor, so for 15 minutes I squelched around, out of range of the cats, until the stuff had dried.

The result: deeply tanned legs,  and the soles of my feet a rich, dark mahogany hue that Shaka Zulu would have envied. And just like that magnificent monarch would have discovered, had he tried, the colour was impervious to all attempts to remove it, including 10 minutes standing in pure bleach.

Does this kind of thing happen to other people, or is it just me?

… to all those people whose comments I have not yet acknowledged. I will do so shortly.

After a wonderful holiday here with daughter and her friends, I had nearly caught up with myself, but lost a few hours when our farmer friend came by to see to his potatoes yesterday evening. Instead of admiring what I thought were my prize tomato plants, he shook his head, pursed his lips, tutted, then fought his way through their jungular growth to reveal patches of mildew eating away through the stalks.

He urged me into an immediate and brutally merciless campaign of disentangling, cutting out, pulling off, stripping away and spraying with that essential cure-all, Bordeaux mixture. Done all that, but now have to re-stake all the blighters - and pray.

Normal service will be resumed, eventually.