My Blog

The snag or the oppportunity about French fetes and their long rows of tressle tables is that you never really know who you are going to be sat next to. Not unless you go to a really rural fete where the head of the family will get there early - lean the chairs into the table, mark the paper table cloth with the demarkation line and then add their name in the middle of it. Woe betide you if you try to move into that territory. Anyway this was more organised than that and we were directed to the next available seats on the rapidly filling up table. English …drat… I prefer to be next to the French but no matter the next people directed to sit on our other side where indeed French.  However just to be polite we introduced ourselves to the English too and … well I blame those clean questions.. we got into deep stuff very quicly…  We were next to someone who was heavily into conspiracy theories, chemical vapour trails (no I didn’t know either!), organised earthquakes, poison in the sky…  Hubby had gone noticeably quiet.. but there’s not much you can do if you want the full dinner… it is either stay put or stay hungry… and we had been starving ourselves all day in anticipation of this meal. At least clean questions saved me from having to give an opinion but the trouble was that we were getting deeper and deeper.. I could not get to who the ‘They’ were though who were doing all these things in the world and ‘they’ were present in every sentence.  In fact he looked totally surprised when I asked “They .. being?”  Somewhere in the midst of all of this I discovered that he was also a musician and had let his music fade in the last few years. Yet when he spoke about it his eyes lit up and his whole being lightened. Well we made it through the meal and the group had started up again inside the bar. Politely we made our exit from the table and sat by the group. I was sure they were Irish but how wrong can you be… very very French. Two guitar players and a violinist and gradually the lead guitarist made his presence in this group more and more prominent. He was absorbed in his music. Every fibre of his body moved with the rhythm, he electronically added drum beats which he played and recorded simultaneously.  His whole being improvised in the moment. His fingers moved so skilfully and rapidly on the guitar strings. This was a skill that was both inherent and practised … I remembered my clarinet and was inspired to take it up again if only to have a tiny fraction of this ability to make music. We were fascinated by this group and stayed well beyond our usual leaving time…  Finally as we were leaving we saw our dinner partner by the door… “Remember the chemtrails” he offerred as a goodbye. “Remember the music” I replied.

 Sue

I thought I could hear bleating and I was right. The neighbours sheep had escaped yet again and here they were headed across our newly seeded field towards my potted hydrangeas on the patio. Now cruelty to animals I don’t support but my hydrangeas …. !! Clad in only my dressing gown I shot down the bank flapping my arms and making sheep dog like noises.. (well dog noises anyway). The sheep looked at my blank so I resorted to the dog repelllent strategy that I had learned from a cycling professional on one of my courses. This involves jumping up and down and sideways at the same time sort of crab like but making a deep grunting noise in the throat as you do so.  Guaranteed to deter dogs when you are cycling especially if you hold the bike in front of you as you do so…  I had to make do without the bike.. ah this got some response.. they scattered.. Now I have seen enough SheepDog trial programmes on the TV to know that you have to come at them from behind and keep circling.. this was getting like hard work. I got them off our field and onto our other neighbours and wasn’t feeling Christian enough to care at this moment. Then a car drove down the lane through the middle of them scattering them to both sides some in our field again and the rest in the neighbours..  Well that was it I ran at them clapping my hands, shouting, my dressing gown  blowing in my wake. I hope to goodness the neighbours didn’t see me but I was committed now and quite enjoying the exercise. The sheep seemed to be moving a lot less than me however. Exhausted with most of them now on the road I returned back to the shelter of the house. At this point the farmer arrived . he must have noticed that the sheep were missing. Now this is going to be interesting i though. How is he going to get them from both fields and down the little lane back to the farm? I am going to enjoy seeing someone else take up the hard work gauntlet.. Well he stood there in the middle of the lane and called them.. yes just called them and they followed.. would you believe it. Then he ran off with the sheep in tow all trotting obediently behind.. You could have knocked me over with a feather! Well I’ll be blowed. There must be something to this leadership stuff after all!

Sue

“Bonjour” I shook his hand and spoke close to his face. He looked startled but quickly regained his composure and replied “Hello, who are you?” in carefully chosen and precisely pronounced words. His pale blue eyes looked inquisitivey in my direction. “We are neighbours of Monsieur Limonie - we have come to see how he is recovering from his operation.” This frail old man was our neighbour’s hospital room mate. His packed bags were beside him on the bed. “He speaks many languages” I heard Albert say admiringly. “My photographs” he indicated to the photos on the table in front of him. He and his wife. His daughter. He wearing a uniform with a medal. “You were in the Military?” “Commandant” he replied sitting upright in his chair as best he could. “and the medal?”. “Gold - George” he replied in faint french. “Others too”. “My son is also in the Military - the Navy - the Marines. He has a medal too - La Croix Militaire” He sat up further. “Vraiment?” “I was many years in the Military - 16,000 hours of flying time. I was parachuted into Germany in the war, captured” His voice was faint - I leant forward. “Before a firing squad” He became more fluent. “Stood there - rifles pointing at me” He held up his arms as you would hold a rifle. “At the last minute the officer said ‘Hold fire’. I was shaking” He shook his arms to show me. “Many memories. Nearly killed. And now - legs gone, eyes gone, ears gone.” He beckoned me closer to him. “I would like someone to kill me now” I felt the emotions well up inside me. He sank back in his chair and looked again at his photos with a wry smile - “It’s a long way to Tipperary”