Advent in England

Every hour and on the half hour automated Christmassy music brightens up the day on a sparkling techno-tree that changes its lighting.

 

Christmas lighting

On the drive from the airport I was enamoured by French Christmas lighting and disappointed that there is none as yet in my village. However, the tree has been placed in La Place and awaits the usual boxes and foil ribbon! Next they have been tying evergreen to the gutterings etc but none in my street as yet! A Christmas star has been on my gate since the first day of Advent and perhaps I shall tie greenery and brightness to the guttering downpipes. I may even make an effort to put some sparkle into the room in case the three children, young enough to revel in the magic, arrive, which I am sure they will. 

The aller-retour journey to England was interesting and I made conversation with several people, sometimes checking if it was ok to talk to them!

At Cambridge I watched as a mother and father had an emotional farewell to their daughter. He sat next to me on the National Express coach. I commented that Goodbyes are never easy but he replied he couldn’t speak English very well, as he was French.  He was delighted, and I thought it funny that in England I was speaking French!  Their tri-lingual daughter had finished her studies and was working through Christmas with an online hotel booking chain!  On the return journey I saw some people who had travelled on the same flight as me last week.  Whilst waiting to see which gates were open for the planes I spoke to an English woman who lives in Ireland but whose daughter and husband live in UK and she has had to return frequently for skin treatment as she has been severely burnt on her legs and arms with a toxic skincare product by Baylis and Harding!  She said she will fight it all the way as three weeks after applying the lotion she is still severely burned and has been told is not just an allergic reaction. The lotion has been analysed by a toxicologist and confirmed as dangerous! Goodness!

I also am glad I didn’t travel on Friday as evidently computer technology crashed and all flights across England were affected!

I've returned with new thoughts, old thoughts, even the possibility that I could if I wish sell up and return to England and although the thoughts have been in my brain for several weeks, I have not yet made a decision. I feel I'm at an impasse but there is much to do before I go anywhere!

I intend to try and do better with the negative thinking that crowds my thinking whilst I live alone, and I intend to set a more disciplined agenda with timed alarms to alert me not to waste my LIFE TIME!  I don’t wish to be overwhelmed again with tasks…so will have to re-learn SMART and KISS approaches to work, rest and play!!!!!! I really need to exercise more and it isn’t enough to just cut out carbohydrates… because then I want to eat sugary foods or too many almonds!     So a rethink on diet and exercise regime is necessary to be punctuated into the daily timetable. I have to do it!

I intend AGAIN to try and prevent myself from thinking and scribing emotional outpourings, though the poems when they come do please me!

A replacement passport has to be applied for before I can again leave France and perhaps I really MUST try to visit other places by train and feel as if I am getting out and about. Christmas is coming. These days I never enjoy this festive season but will make a better effort. 

Santa One, Santa Two

 I smiled when I reached my village at six thirty of an evening. A good omen! The second joy was that Big Feet the Cat came running along from the rear garden entrance to the roadside when she heard my car! Now she is nestled on the settee in front of a roaring woodburner. Arriving home after a week’s absence, the temperature in bedroom and kitchen was 10C, the grand salon 12C rising to 17C, the courtyard 6C, Chauvigny street 4C.  There was evidence of rain, whereas before the flight descended to Poitiers, there was beautiful sunshine. Left that in England! Five hot water bottles are in bed as I haven’t bought that electric blanket! My family always called them hotties!

It was a fairly good week unfortunately marred by daughter being under par when I arrived and then she and grand-daughter suffered a tummy bug for three days, luckily without vomiting. Many children were absent from school and some hospital wards were closed.  I never managed to see my mother, as the day I could have hired a vehicle, I didn’t.  Although disappointed not to have seen her I can’t feel guilty that I too was feeling low and tired. Certainly didn’t wish to take her any illness. Fortunately, I haven’t succumbed. I saw some friends and not others. I didn’t buy clothes or shoes as there was no time, yet, I did collect more weight than I took, having to remove 2kg from checked in baggage to cabin baggage! 

HOWEVER, the best gift of all was that I was allowed to take Francesca out without parental chaperones for the FIRST time in SIX YEARS!  Mother can begin to let go! Gran'mama can be!  Not-so-little-one-anymore was ill on Monday but the school didn’t send her home! She missed the school carol concert and so did I!  I never managed to treat her after school as planned but maybe this was better.  It was agreed that after three days indoors we would go to see Santa on a Saturday afternoon. Gran’mama and little one, growing ever taller, walked hand in hand into the city trying to avoid the crowds. ‘Quel horreur’, when she said she needed to go to the toilet. I explained that I didn’t know where they were, then suspected a ruse when she said that there were reindeer in the Mall, the old Mall that I avoid at all possible costs. One couldn’t take a risk, so we nipped into John Oliver restaurant, which I dislike, but I knew where the loos were!  Trying to avoid going to the department store first, I asked which Santa she would prefer to go to but then I had a wheeze of an idea! It would be unlikely for her to believe in HIM, after the age of seven. "I tell you what Francesca, would you like to see TWO Santas?”  We laughed conspiratorially together when I suggested we could make a comparison, explaining the meaning of the word!  I felt like a naughty girl, freed from parental control and about to have some fun!  Ooohhh, Santa One and Santa Two. Gran'mama hadn’t seen Santa for a very long time! Whhhooopppeee!  Francesca chose to go to The Stranger Hall Museum first. We paid £5 but had to wait for the next slot in half an hour.  Therefore, I paid £3.50 to visit the house, which I had never been into in all the time I had lived near that city!  This is fun… there is a sixpence finding trail… each has a letter, unravel the letters to find which day in the year is special for mixing Christmas Puddings. Knowing the answer made this easy, as I wasn’t sure what size sixpences we were looking for! Eventually after four rooms I found a paper one about 20cm diameter! We backtracked and found one more … eventually we found 4 out of 6 letters, filled in the last two, showed the Victorian lady in the kitchen whom we had already spoken to about Christmas puds and Victorian money in her table display.  (I had to correct her when she spoke about holly as a pudding decoration when she was holding a sprig of bay leaves!!!!!  Hm??? What kind of English education is this!!!!!????)  Francesca won her reward of a size of a sixpence Christmas pudding – a foil wrapped chocolate ball!

Santa was BRILL! Very Victorian - red not green! He spoke very eloquently. Francesca had a charming conversation with him and Alf the Elf, who disappointingly was in his normal clothes wearing an elfin headdress. She received a wrapped present, delighted to open a history book including pictures and the story of Guido Fawkes and the Great Fire of London, which she has been studying at school. 

Next was the large department store where she was confident to purchase her ticket at the cash desk and work out how much change from a £10 note… easy peasy for her - £6.  On both occasions she was asked t spell her name ( it doesn't have a 'h')  and was complemented on an Italian name!  This Santa did have a real beard but when the reindeer feeding timetable was updated by a man in mufti instead of looking as if he was a Santa’s little helper, I was aghast when my dear granddaughter announced, having watched Santa arrive from his lunch break, that he was not real!!!!!!!!! Younger ears were present as we were third in the queue!  Full marks to the assistant who managed to allay reality and told Santa through the window that she doubted his reality!  Santa being well trained, understood what to say.  She could choose from the piles of toys in the grotto providing she left him some food for his reindeer!  She chose a soft turtle with goo goo green eyes. All kiddies could have a red balloon!  Actually it was Gran'mama who could reach the string to pull it from the ceiling. These days the parents pile in to the grotto and one can ask to take a photo of child with Santa. I thought it was all good value and great fun for me!!!!!!!

Afterwards it was pizza and ice cream as promised but not to the dreaded Pizza hut and express requested. We compromised with “Giraffe!” The main purpose of the visit was to see family and rid myself of French cabin fever. The weather was kind and so were my friends and family! It was mostly joyful! 

Intermission in-between Island Reportage

Thursday:
Last night a storm with over 30cm rainfall! Logs arrived at 8h30 - six steres which is two cords. They weren't much wet... meaning they are good dry logs, three years old!
It is true that I had agreed with the man that the second week of September was better for me because I'd anticipated assistance from a friend, whose agenda then changed!  Instead, I was invited to 'les iles'  and as I hadn't got there by myself as intended,  it was all speed ahead to get Autumn garden, admin and household tasks sorted for an impending visitor to come and help me with some moderate tasks that need four hands!
Although I had thought about doing so, I didn't leave a note for the man to say my holiday week had changed unexpectedly from the first week to the second! Anyway, he was OK about it.
Last year, it was a nightmare when I had a female friend to help, AND I paid her son to help, AND the man had to chainsaw the 50cm logs into halves!  It took she and me eight hours each!
Yesterday, I prepped the areas for potential stockage, contacted two female friends to see if they were likely to be available. It's OK ... I get used to challenges!
Logs arrived at 8h30. Annoyingly the bulk was discharged onto the road just near the back entrance. I wanted the lesser amount there. Not to worry.  His vehicle cannot get into my courtyard. For an hour and three quarters I cleared the lesser pile of logs sprawled onto the roadside. Important to get the road clear!
Then coffee time! I ate that Ile d'Oleron croissant stuffed with apricot jam. But, as I put the pot onto the table it slipped and spilled onto my furniture and carpet! Coffee grounds everywhere! Fortunately, the chair fabric had been scotchguarded! Can I say that word with the referendum today? Also, the French say Scotch for sellotape! It was/is a brand name! Will they be able to say that word?
Then low, an Angel from heaven appeared, her name meaning Light, to help for an hour!  She brought another wheelbarrow.  Between us we moved the larger split logs and round ones, but as quite a few are weird shapes, they were set aside for the electric splitter at a later date!
My man has been good and not only has he delivered the logs in the requested 33cm lengths but also split quite a few. 
First of all, find the half moon shaped logs and start to build the end stacks. Gradually fill the space between with the other logs. Keep the lengths the same and marry up the front edges (which I did not do!) In today's case, I had two rows developing, the shorter thirds and the longer thirds. It has stacked quite well.  Small, thin round logs have gone to the back of the house as they are lighter to carry further to the indoors in the winter!
Half past noon and the risotto from yesterday was warmed.  Need to take on carbs!  I rested for less than an hour including 15 minutes with my back on the floor following the advice I received from the Alexander Technique man whom I saw in UK in April!
Worked for another couple of hours when I needed tea and cake. Thank you to those from the CCC whose cake slices are stashed in my freezer! Taken a second ibuprofen as my back reminds me it exists! It's a 45 minute break whilst I type and rest my back. Get back to it girl! 
At this point all the logs have been removed from the road and now there are those that have been brought to the courtyard. Split and stack. After the rain the sun! It's hot again! I'm fading fast! Well done me and Claire. Good day working.  It's satisfying to see logs stacked!
18h Will continue tomorrow.
UPDATE:
Monday 22 September
It did seem surprising to me that I managed to clear the pile of logs, mostly alone in effectively about 8 to 10 hours and it did seem surprising to me that the initial pile did not look as much as last year... need to compare photos... but I have measured and it seems that I have 3.65 cubic metres of logs and not 6.00 cubic metres.  It seems to me the man has charged 50e per square metre plus 40e perhaps to cut the 2 cords into thirds.  In which case I am about 100 euros out of pocket! 
In my other residence my former partner made a big song and dance one year of the measurements checking the space and the logs and verifying in a way not to embarrass the French supplier and neighbour ... and after that we were never supplied short measure.  
I think that I have been short measured!
TODAY  I have measured the existing logs bought in 2013 including those I bought from my friend when he sold his house and I have 10 steres.
Making a visual comparison of the section that measures 5.70 sq metres and the amount I have just stacked accounting for the smaller logs I have put elsewhere as there wasn't sufficient space, it is my opinion I have been definitely been short measured! 
I'm not sure what I can do. I think nothing, but next time, I need to make clear with big gestures and the tape measure that the space I wish to fill measures six square metres!!!  
THAT would indicate I know what I am talking about!!!!!!

Facing the onset of Spring

Days become lighter mornings and evenings and with that a frosty morning snap has arrived.
My arms have been working, stretching, lifting, carrying, which seems to suit the pain.  It's very odd, because at night, the pain keeps me awake or wakes me so that I lose sleep.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the inflammation has reduced but am reluctant to say that there is improvement, or that the pain is getting better.  Ginger tea is the order of each day as it is a natural anti-inflammatory! And so it is and so.

The media reports about the elderly. Am I becoming thus :)? It is scary!  I loved to hear about Nell on Woman's Hour this week. She is 100 Years old and a true inspiration. She cleans every day and says it's much easier for her  once the lady has giving it 'a do' ... what a marvellous expression!  Keep on moving that's what we've all got to do.  Use it or lose it.  I do my best to keep moving but it has to further improve! When I sit still and cannot peel myself away from technology, I know that if I can dance or 'faire le repassage' / iron the bedlinen whilst David Bowie sings then I will feel better!  But I like to sit and write / type, read the news, research this and that which the internet provides.  It has transformed my life.

Whilst Facing the onset of Spring:
There is a 2 stere stack of logs from 2013, yet I daren't touch them as they are stacked so well.  Therefore,  using the machine, I have started splitting logs from the January 2014 delivery. Really that wood needs to dry out a little more as some will not give to the 400 kilo pressure.  Smaller/thinner oak logs give greater immediate heat.  Although the sun has been shining,  some days or parts of days are still pretty cold, but there are times when one can have morning coffee or afternoon tea in the courtyard or rear garden.  There has been what I call a RAW East Anglian spike to the crisp, cold-blue sky and an edge to the wind. Tonight, 5th March, one can see Orion The Hunter lit by the myriads of stars and single crescent moon.

Whilst Facing the early Spring, pages of Life turn...
I've been walking around my house climbing ladders, sorting and spring cleaning.  I like DIY when part of a team, even though I am mainly the support skivvy. Friendship should have been more than working at home improvement.  It's been a fact that I can't do this work alone. Eventually, with not great effort, I succumbed to accepting an offer of help and I, in turn try to help him.  I've said it before that 'It's not yet finished until it's finished'.  Friendship doesn't just cease. Whilst there is laughter and fun which makes us happy, there is another day to celebrate, another day to live, another day to gather happiness around us!  What is happiness? What is friendship? What is a relationship?

I know that if I truly love someone then that love will go wherever she/he stays and wherever she/he goes. In the case if my friend, I hope that my love will give him courage to find whatever he thinks he is looking for, whatever he thinks he didn't have when he lived with me! I give him my blessings.
I / he / we haven't always been kind to each other and that fact hurts me beyond belief in my darkest moments... and...then I wake up!!!!!
I / he/we have been quite frustrated with each other for all sorts of reasons.  
It's a shame and a waste of friendship! 
I don't understand how people have successful friendships let alone relationships or marriage!

He jokingly but seriously says I must take advantage. The Wheels of Life are moving and we face further future LOSS.  On my return from a long drive to buy a matching curtain pole to the first, I sobbed most of the 50 minute journey home!!!!!!!  Why do I cry? I know why!!!!!!!  But as I cry, I think, and thinking whilst I drive helps to unravel emotion, though it's not quite safe to do all this at the same time!  I absolutely know how I feel and it won't go away and by Jove I have tried, even not connecting with him for 5 months!  Its feels like a form of madness, illogical, worse when he have made contact and then are apart.  Unrequited Love, I suppose that is what it is.... 
How are people able to care so much for each other after 15, 30, 50 or more years of marriage? 
What made us so co-dependently close and then what made us fail to keep tolerant and patient with our foibles?  I/he/we made so many mistakes!

Why is it that the smallest of jobs and most final of tasks when titivating interior decoration seem to take for ever?  However,  those 6 French doors of the barn part of the house are at last painted internally.  Now wooden battens fixed to polystyrene backed plaster-boarded walls take curtain poles to receive beautiful Laura Ashley cream damask curtains from a house I left in 2002. They have emerged from the suitcase, visited the dry-cleaners at huge expense, but the lovely lady halved the price as there were 4 curtains, and at last they now provide ambience.  However, I must sit and lower the hem which means using needle, thread and patience.

I'm trying to consider having a chambre d'hôte in the high season.  This week and last we've been working through small jobs where broken door-knobs have been repaired, plumbing to the exterior toilet and sink has been repaired, and there has been much drilling, sawing, sanding, painting.
It has been a pleasure!

Poetic thinking about absent adult children in Spring

Sunday morning sun is shining glistening dew on grass.

Crisp it feels, but not too cold under the blue-bright clear sky.
Wearing a coat I sit... on a fuschia pink chair... drinking tea... eating toast with marmalade.

I watch a mostly black bumble bee arrive on the stone wall to sun himself.
I feel the need to sun myself.

There is a yearning to be outside...
to titivate the garden... to walk... to cycle... but inside there are chores.

There is a yearning to have company...

to share ideas about the making of a home with a garden of thoughts.
There is a yearning to share Time...
as it passes in the thoughts of a garden where Life shortens day by day.

Morning sun is shining... but glistening dew-like droplets
are swept warmly away from my face with laughter
as bright sunlight spears my eyes and dries the joyful tears

to move morning thoughts optimistically forwards.

Like The Spring as it moves forwards from The Winter.

We grow like daffodils pushing through verdant grass to raise their sunny lemon heads.

We grow to enjoy LIFE without the presence of all those whom we love -
children, family, friends.
Yet here in my garden in France, and in my garden of love,
absent like the daffodils in their beds
they are waiting to show up!
I am waiting for the next step.

Shake up. Shape up.
Be like the busy black bumble bee. 
Look for the warmth before we rust away.
It's SPRING!

Monday update: 
Another very warm day... that did not turn cold until 17h. The sky stayed clear all day with WARM sunshine whereas yesterday there were afternoon showers. There is a brilliant setting sun. I see red streaks in the sky at 18h.
On Sunday morning I was so overjoyed with the signs of Spring that I started to think that France on a glorious warm February morning is such a golden treasure. 
Yesterday, I was thinking about my grown up children and thinking that because of the choices I made about life they cannot be here to enjoy what I enjoy! Neither can I be with them to enjoy what they enjoy!!!! I keep tweaking the words... a wordsmith takes time to be happy with expression of a deeper depth of feeling. This 'poem' has been an attempt  to say how much I love them... as much as morning sunshine... as much as dancing daffodils... and more!!!!!!

Gaudate et Joyeux Noel 2013

Joyeux Noël with my favourite photo of the village chateau first published Christmas 2012

Restless in France wishes everyone

 a very festive twelve days of Christmastide

with Peace, Joy, Hope, Patience and Charity, good health and happiness.

May you spend happy, restful moments with family and or friends or even alone if that is the case.

Gaudate

ADDENDUM: at almost 10am Christmas Day, I count my blessings whilst feeling sad for all those in UK who have flooded homes and are without power. None of us are immune from natural disaster. I expect the price of heating and lighting will soar even more. Ah who was it who said HUMBUG?

Ends, Beginnings,Thoughtful Moments

For some reason I keep reading the 4th part of T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets
(MY brown highlights are thoughtful reflections about time, space, resolving difficulties, cold, warmth, living and the dead)

Little Gidding (where was a former 17th century monastery)

I  
Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?
              If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.
              If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.


II
Ash on and old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house—
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
       This is the death of air.
There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
       This is the death of earth.
Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
       This is the death of water and fire.
In the uncertain hour before the morning
     Near the ending of interminable night
     At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
     Had passed below the horizon of his homing
     While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
     Between three districts whence the smoke arose
     I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
     Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
     And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
     The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
     I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
     Both one and many; in the brown baked features
     The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
     So I assumed a double part, and cried
     And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'
Although we were not. I was still the same,
     Knowing myself yet being someone other—
     And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
     And so, compliant to the common wind,
     Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
     Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
     We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,
     Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
     I may not comprehend, may not remember.'
And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse
     My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
     These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
     By others, as I pray you to forgive
     Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
     For last year's words belong to last year's language
     And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
     To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
     Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
     In streets I never thought I should revisit
     When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
     To purify the dialect of the tribe
     And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
     To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
     First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
     But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
     As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
     At human folly, and the laceration
     Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
     Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
     Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
     Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
     Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
     Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
     Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
     He left me, with a kind of valediction,
     And faded on the blowing of the horn.


III
There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.
Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.


IV
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
     Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
     To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
     We only live, only suspire
     Consumed by either fire or fire.


V
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
     Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

With thanks 

Sunday Springtime

It was 25C in the shade in my courtyard!
I've managed to fork over the drying soil where I'd previously turned over grassy clods which I have now removed to place in the dips of my "lawned" garden. I took the plunge and planted 50 seed potatoes.  It might be too early but too bad! I've also worked hard at housework - at least two hours! It was not so much dirty,  just disorganised, but dust from the woodburner, with all doors open seems to settle!   Today, I can tick off

• smiling at a lizard scooting around my courtyard,
• hearing a cuckoo in the distance, 
• listening to nightingales in the morning and evening, 
• a 45 minute cycle ride, 
• dining in the evening al fresco. 

Happiness is The Arrival of Spring

March madness

The VMC developed "a sound" in January and since I was going away,  I informed the electrician that he could repair it on my return. It had been installed in the attic with a hanging loop of tube which collected condensed water.  In January it was disconnected, the water removed,  but we considered there might be another loop. It's difficult to describe but the fitter had taken the tube the longest route forming a huge C shape!
The company boss, not the man who installed it, arrived and admonished me for not running it 24 hours each day.  Fair enough, I can understand his logic. When I protested that it would withdraw the heat from the room, he explained that thermic shock is created in the winter when turning off the electrical supply. The tube is exposed to cold air in the attic and steam that is travelling upwards which has not yet evacuated into the environmental air, gets condensed. In the summer, he says it is OK to turn it off after 3 to 5 hours following someone having a shower or bath.  He thought that as it only costs 30e per year to run 24 hours x 365, it should not be a problem!  Although I spoke about saving the planet and my purse, he shrugged his shoulders in the Gallic manner, and said that until recently there wasn't another option in France!!!!!! Hmph!!!! He argued the advantage that new air was being drawn into the room as it has no opening window.  Point taken I suppose! I cannot dispute with such a charming man!
He re-connected the tube to the extractor machine. Thank goodness I took him into the bathroom and switched it on because the sound was even louder.  He commented that there was another loop filled with water!  Into the attic the fragile wood flooring was removed AGAIN, new holes cut into it and into the wood flooring that was below that floor level, yet above the ceiling of the bathroom.  My friend helped by sawing various access holes, being careful not to cut any floor supporting timber, nor any beams. Then the electrician carefully smashed a hole through the terracotta brick suspended ceiling that we'd left in situ when we lowered the ceiling of the bathroom.  Now the flexible pipe could be withdrawn from its former position, taken vertically upwards with no twists, turns or hanging loops of pipe, thereby shortening the tube and distance that the steam has to travel.  He also adjusted the VMC vanes so that less warm air is extracted.  His employee had not set it with that option!  It is now working silently.

Meanwhile the chaos upstairs has been left until Monday when we can reposition the flooring whilst removing stones, bricks, pieces of fibreglass, nibbled walnuts and animal nesting material! ..... I hate to know that there is a mess hidden unseen behind walls or floors of buildings!!!!!   There is about a metre of space between the ceiling of the bathroom and the attic floor.
In addition, the leak below the bath doesn't seem to have an explanation and does not always pour forth water onto the tiles floor when the bath water is emptied ... so the bath panel is off!  Plus, I'm still trying to decide where to buy the bath screen!!!!! England it will be, as I want it higher than the normal dimension.
The bedroom was about to get the final coat of paint now that the F&B paint has successfully covered the cheap and nasty Wickes paint. However, this morning, my friend commented on the concave dips between the sheets of 'plasterboard on polystyrene' panels that were installed in about 1985.  Those three vertical hollows have been filled, require sanding when dry, then re-filling, sanding again, before paint can be added to that last and largest wall of that particular room.  Patience is required before I can return to sleep there.
The large Salon continues to have 'le rideau bleu' across it, haha, to keep the wood dust that side of the room and the woodburner dust this side!!!!!!  I am continually sweeping and vacuuming both sides!!!!! I decided to sort out HIS tools, screws and nails. It is worse than a ravelled ball of knitting!!!! However, we discovered screws etc that he didn't think he had and so a saving has been made on going to Brico shops.
Preparation is being made to start to replace the glazing of 4 exterior French doors.
The warmer weather is arriving.... OR IS IT??????  Forecast suggests lower temperatures!  Easter is coming and 'hey ho' the weeks and months pass by as I dream of another life not renovating. I am unskilled and to some extent I love updating a house.... if only I'd been younger!
The garden beckons after the grand clear up ... but I might just avoid it tomorrow and go to my pottery class.
I am in relatively good health. However, I am in shock this evening to hear how a very good friend of my son has serious spinal problems, her husband also has bone and joint problems, coupled with work difficulties or unemployment PLUS looking after a 3 year old.  Life is not fair.

Summer Scents with Springsteen

It was 24 degrees in the twilight tonight as I danced in my kitchen and courtyard to Bruce Springsteen Born to Run and many other wonderful magic songs by he, the man who is such a delight with the E Street Band........ Go to here.
When I walked around the town earlier to descend stone steps and ascend different ones, to stand on the bridge to ponder, then walk under the bridge to be stunned by clematis and roses,  the heavy, heavenly perfume-ladened atmosphere identified near the chateau, clung to me wherever I went and still the scent haunts me but I wear no perfume......the lingering, scent that I have not experienced before in this village is creeping through my open doors.......and the smell of wisteria or jasmine or I don't know what,  pervades and is so wonderful that I do not wish to go to bed........nights like these where I can sit in my courtyard and feel WARMTH through all my skin and bones ..... oh my love......it's when I love France and love Life and Flowers.

Cranes - a sound of springtime to behold

I had just returned to VdV with my friend's washing ... he still has no water in the kitchen on account of the freeze and has to do some plumbing... and honk honk, honk honk, ... 20 cranes in the sky... some stragglers and then one all alone neck outstretched "Wait for me " he calls.  The flock returned for him and then veered sharply to collect others and then there were 27........... WOW and WOW and WOW. Spring has arrived!!!!!!!!! Oh JOY!

I should not be still awake as it is now morning of the next day!

Iced icicle - the pointing hand

An icicle grows: Click on a photo to enlarge.

The long arm

The Pointed Fingers on the Hand of the Arm.

Transmutation again.

And look how the heavy hanging arm has dragged the guttering down!

It was 130cm long before it grounded itself in the thaw of 13th February. Lucky for some that no one was beneath it.

Iced Water

Firstly photos of the river frozen: Click on a photo to enlarge.

 A rare view of an ice laden river below the chateau.

Christmas Greetings 2011

I can't see Christmas robins, nor doves a-cooing-so
Cat never neared a cradle in a stable 2000 years ago.
I see that ox and donkey arrived without ado
but ostrich was excluded and terrible tiger too.
Camels got an invite, as did three wise Eastern kings
giving gifts of gold and myrrh, frankincense and things.
Bankers and financiers mumbled murmurs in disguise
and thought the sleepy shepherds were sensible and wise
to gift soft lambs and washable wool, never to be fleeced.
Herod later came to tell that he wished the baby seized.
Frankincense was costly, as indeed it is today,
signals opulence in churches, mosques, special for the Lord's day.

Will Ethiopians continue to export this wonderful aromatic resin,
When Boswellia trees fail to reproduce for the Christmas season?
Will they continue to tree-tap and let long-beetle attack,
let cattle graze at bark, for this amazing aphrodisiac,
let it no longer help depression, nor give medicinal purpose,
nor serve the perfume industry?  O yay, it'll cost more to purchase.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS 2011