I imagine that four months’ silence is long enough for any reasonable person to have supposed that this Blog is dead - but just in case anyone is still curious enough to look ... another entry.
Winter - always bad, but this year intolerable. I suspect that, like many people, I quasi-hibernate as a means of getting through the short, dark, cold, wet days - and the long nights. Suspended animation. System just ticking over. Waiting for sun and spring. There are, of course, those wonderful days when the sun shines and the grass looks almost green, and the catkins hang like coloured ribbons on the hazel branches, promises of good times coming. Then the spirits lift again. But then winter bites again. Brrrrh!
We’re just back from a couple of weeks in France - sandwiched between a fortnight on Fuerteventura and a fortnight (still to come - hurray) on Lanzarote. France was - as ever - lovely of course. But it’s still northern Europe - and the snow in Brittany made every effort to prevent our reaching our wee house, which when we miraculously arrived was deep in fresh snow, too. The moorhen whose passing left these tracks had been usurped by a frozen pond, and later on I watched as a big, black-bottomed, white-whiskered Coypu skated desperately over its frozen lake. Ice and snow are rare enough in the southern Vendee for both these animals never to have experience it before. Wonder what they thought?
We solved the winter by nipping out for une petite Balade whenever weather allowed - and staying indoors by a log fire for the rest. Nice. Cosy. Oh - and twice in the past week the blessed sunshine warmed our courtyard up for us to lunch en plein air. So perhaps this interminable winter will eventually lose its grip. Can hope.
Oh - and for the first time in some months I see that my book has had a sale! See, Alan, the future is full of hope whichever way you look.
