The last two weeks

Wow, it is Sunday 1st september and I cannot believe that time has gone so quickly - this time next week I shall be in if not my bed in my house.

The Saturday before my cousins arrived I attended a guitar concert at La Fontenelle - can't say I've ever been a particular fan of the guitar but I am of La Fontenelle and hence I attended. Met some interesting people, mostly Brits. The next day was a get together for the whole village, i.e. La Revenuais, to which I was invited, We all sat on a long table, there was much drinking and laughter. I spoke with a lady whose name is I think Josiane who is a foster parent. The foster children were stitting next to me and one of them, a very young 12, I got talking to and introduced her to my dogs.

Actually this poor little girl was being rather ignored, so I played with her for a bit first with the dogs and then at some board game involving numbers. I left about 7, but as someone pointed out to me the French really love partying and indeed the party went on until midnight, as when the French party they party. She came to see me later that night complaining of boredom and the unselfish thing would have been to play with her for longer.

She visited me the following day with a young companion, a delightful boy called Farid (8) who said he was from Morocca and like Alison, from the ASE, the organization that helps children who have been relieved from their parents. They played with the dogs and were very good. I do hope they are well looked after.


Actually I was out of sequence, because this happened the weekend before my cousins arrived; after they left I went down with a stomach bug (no connection!) on Saturday and rather in dread that i would not be well enough to cope with the next influx of visitors.

However, I was better by Sunday and pleased to see them when they rolled up at lunch time, although they were shaken at having lost three of their cats to Jan's ex via the rather violent behaviour of Craig, Jan's son in law.

On Tuesday, I had to go out early to fetch Miranda from St Malo, so I suggested to Jan and Cathy that they go and explore Fougeres, which they did, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The rest of the time, we made a couple of trips - first to Vitre, and then a whole day trip to Dol de Bretagne, followed by Combourg.

Dol has a lovely cathedral which is very gothic inside and out, with some beautiful carvings and stained glass.

Between Dol and Combourg, we stopped at a rather delightful standing stone (they are called menhirs in this part of the world) which was very talle, very phallic and very surrounded by maize fields.

Dol and Vitre are quite similar in that they are delightful small towns with a medieval centre and fine buildings, a castle at Vitre and a cathedral at Dol. My favourite, though, is Combourg, which is smaller than the other two towns and dominated by a castle dating from the middle ages, but with associations with Chateaubriand, the father of romanticism.

Chateaubriand, the author of Les Memoires D'Outre Tombe, lived at the château as a child; most of his family seem to have died in the French revolution but he conveniently was abroad at the time. He hated the château, mainly because of his very strict father who would spend his evenings pacing about the long gallery whilst insisting that his children remained silent.

There is also a story of a ghost who went about with his cat, when the latter's skeleton was recovered, the ghost was reported to spend his nocturnal wanderings looking for the cat. Poor Chateaubriand and his siblings were sent to bed in rooms as far apart from one another as possible (and very possible in such a large château). Because of the ghost(s), their evening ritual involved searches of all surrounding drapery to ensure that the ghosts had not temporarily occupied their rooms.

Combourg is a very pretty little town, smaller than the other two, and had the distinction of being the birthplace of Honda as well as Romanticism.

Combourg has wonderful views over the surrounding countryside, as is seen in these photos:

Cathy, Jan, Miranda - and dogs - and I spent some lovely evenings sitting out on my terrace eating dinner - as you can see, Honda enjoyed this relaxed atmosphere.

Honda thinks socializing is a thoroughly good thing, especially if she can have some of the food.

She also enjoys just relaxing a deux

Jan and Cathy left in a flurry on the Friday, leaving behind a map which they had brought at Combourg showing Welsh bishops or something. I am supposed to encase this in a cylindrical tube, something i'm not sure I can quite acheive this side of the channel.

Miranda and I made one more excursion, to the Château de Rochers Sevigne, where the extraordinary 17th century writer Mme de Sevigne lived after her husband died in a duel over who was to become mistress of another woman. She wrote beautiful letters to her daughter which were posthumously published. You can only see about one room of the castle which seemed a bit shabby and was approached up some back stairs.  The chapel does not really match the house, being a bit overly flamboyant Baroque, rather giving the impression that they didn't know how to furnish it and so just put in lots of gold and silver and pictures of people swirlng up to heaven.

The gardens, designed by Le Notre, were beautiful and very symetrical.  All the other participants of the guided tour and us ended up in the tea place, and we had a nice conversation in French.

The cousins

Just spent the last three days with my cousin Ann snd her son David, my godson. Ann is my cousin on my father's side (her father was a radiologist, my father's brother), David is her son born just after the death of my first husband. I remember him as a slightly shy, definitely geeky young man who had trouble at university, where I, by the nature of my academic background, naturally encouraged him, but goodness, how he has matured now as a thirty something young man. He is highly intelligent and able to converse on a wide range of subjects, whilst also being very polite and considerate. His main interests apart from his work are music and especially cordon bleu cookery. He is a réal foodie, which makes cooking for him quite a task!

I survived that with a few good-tasting but bad-looking recèpes; I think that the most disastrous was giving them a gallette that broke. (Gallettes are a wonderful Brittany culinary invention: a very thin, buckwheat pancake which can, it seems, include almost anything but is best with egg and bacon (anyone quessed the British influence?) I have had it served to me with the aforesaid ingredients cold, but the pancake beautifully neatly folded; by myself, again with aforesaid ingredients, when the gallete was warm, broken and all tasted very good.

Ann and David came with me to Fougeres and Dinan; in Fougeres, we went to the castle and although it was my third visit, this time I really fell under its spell. They make extensive use of multimédia; there is a preliminary film which sets the picture as far as the land of the marches goes, and various of the towers have their own animation of the lives of the people who lived there, including Melusine, who rather mysteriously seems to have acquired a drangon's tail, which must have put the dampeners on her wedding night but a least made it easier to get away. After that, we repaired up town for lunch, anc then walked down through the public gardens to the château.

Fougeres, if she were a woman, whould have lovely haïr from the back, but a common face seen from the front, or some other combination of very obvious good and very obvious bad features. As you approach it from the west, you drive through the suburb of Lecousse and through a coupls of big roundabout, from where you see one side of the town rising up on a very steep bluff. The vision, as you come up the the first view of the town proper, is of a wall of houses not so much jostling together for space but rather elbowing one another for precedence. It reminded me of some other places where geography and architecture match - San Gimigniano in Northern Italy for example,or Matera in the south.

Go over the hill into the town centre, where you are still in the town centre but the tourist signs have run out, it's a different matter. Roads with concrete post-war buildings accompany graceless streets all of which seem to run into the Place de la Republique, which once prèsumably had fine buildings but now they seem mostly municipal, there is the odd shop and ubiquitous estate agent.

Dinan was also a success, althpugh I could not persuade them to get into any of the muséums. By finding the ramparts and the way down to the river Rance we were able to get a better view of the town:

It's so sweet to see the stone buildings crowd up to one another, down a veritable mish-mash of tiny alleys with just enough room to through your dirty water on the ground, and certainly not enough to let a car pass through. Not to mention the beautify beamed facades of some of the buildings, seen here left.

We had a very nice meal of moules and chips for me (too much); lingustinse for the others. I am reliably informed that they are delicious but I like my food easily accessible.

On the way back, we looked at Combourg, another pretty town which is the birthpace of Honda, here seen trying to launch a raid on the food.

It's more réal claim to faim is the writer Chateaubriant, who had connections with the castle, which was owned by his family. By the 16th century, when I believe the castle was built, even though Europe was still a dangerous place with wars stoked with the flames of religion, which as we all know makes war even more horrible.

However, they seem to have grown a bit more sanguine about being attacked, and you don't see the kind of fortifications you do for earlier castels, involving different spaces for massing the troops, arrow slits, and of course a moat and drawbridge. According to the ads, it actually seemed to have a number of rooms which looked as though they had been preserved as if someone could life in them. This I guess is more my kind of castle: I like to see how people lived, and it's difficult if you are in a place devoid of furniture and décorations.

Neither Ann nor David, however, showed much interest in going inside and it was late, so we just wandered through the gardens, with me looking forward to seeing the house, with its Chateaubriand association.

The following day, David being asked what he wanted to do opted for a long walk of 13k which I was not sure I would be able to do because of the length, and handling Honda, who actually proved herself surprisingly good in the évent. David made clear to us that there were two points at which we could shorten the walk.

The walk was mostly across agricultural lands, field with hedgerows and small patches of woodland, and the paths turned out to be extremely narrow between the wired off field (in some cases electrically so) and the hedgerow, which was sometimes overgrown with brambles. It was a great irritation to the dogs, who could not understand why we couldn't walk on perfectly good ground the other side of the wire fence

We went through some very pretty woods, walked a bit further, had lunch, walked on, right into some bog which we could not avoid, after which David, who led mountain walking trips in Manchester, showed his leadership skills by curtailing the walk so we finished on the road.

Altogether it was a very pleasant visit, and one that enabled me to get to know, and admire, my godson for the person he has become.

New friends and old friends

I am not by nature a solitary animal. After Derek died, I used to feel guilty about being lonely, or not guilty exactly, but just being cross with myself about not coping. Now I don't feel guilty any more, because I feel that man is by his nature a social animal, and anyway, needing to be with people some of the time is really just how I am.

The difficulty of being without a partner is that you don't have a built-in social life and company, so you need to provide it. This can involve a great deal of effort and a certain amount of juggling - you end up with a surfeit at some times and great empty spaces at others. You can hardly refuse someone on the grounds that you have too much company at that particular point in time.

Anyway, with my stay in France I knew that I had company at the beginning of the stay, and then a long period at the end when I would have a full house. But there was a period in the middle lasting three weeks when I would be largely on my own. It would necessitate either self sufficiency, or making efforts to get to know new people, as well as renewing acquaintance with old friends.

Jim is definitely an example of the latter, someone whom I used to meet up with sometimes on my own but mostly with other people. He belonged to a group of friends who originally met through a shared interest in art and literature and music; I was introduced to the circle by someone I met who lives in Clapham, a shy artist who invited me to come and see his etchings...

Jim is a fiercely intelligent physics graduate, who got into computers very early (he now does not have one), and made a lot of money, which enabled him to retire at 35. He divided his time between a flat in Hampstead (where I attended many parties in my 30s) and a large house in Wiltshire. In addition to being brilliant with computers (and with money) he is also deeply interested in all forms of spirituality and méditation, spending some time with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in India.

At a certain point he began to find the sheer busyness of life in the UK too much for him, and bought a place in France, vaguely in the area of the Loire Valley (the biggest town nearby is Angers). He now has a three-bedroomed house in a rather overgrown meadow, in a tiny hamlet (these tiny hamlets form the basis of habitation in France Profonde). The house is, according both to him and to appearances, very much a typical rustic French house, having had little done to it in all the years that Jim has lived there.

When I last met with Jim in January, I was struck by his deep spiritualité, not in the sense of adherence to a formal religion, or even belief in a particular deity, but rather the ability to draw on deep resources within himself to heal past and present hurts.

I don't doubt his sincerity but I am not sure he is a model to follow - self sufficiency sometimes seems to bleed into insensitivity to others' needs, such as hunger after a long journey, and need for lunch. Anyway, judge not as they say...

I also spent a lovely day in Rennes, having lunch and visiting the art gallery, which has an interesting collection which includes some impressionists and post-impressionists. I was with Mireille, whom I had met on the choral course.

On Monday, I drove my little 'chocolate box' car down to Rennes airport to return it, and then got a taxi (paid for by the AA) to the garage which was repairing my car - which actually had just repaired it, improving on the estimated completion by about 10 days. It was a great relief to get my own car back, even though I still feel nervous behind the wheel. I think I just don't get on with gears.

On Tuesday, I went to see Pam and Bernard Juby, friends of Julie's, who also live in the Loire Valley area, but further to the west than Jim, near the town of Pouance. They love livng in Francd for nearly 19 years, and has no désire to go back to England, although they are downsizing to a smaller house in Pouance.

The Loire comprises a huge area, most of which is nowhere near the famous parts, ie Saumur, Angers, Chambourd etc. You are in an area of mainly agricultural land, with woods and the odd lake, not too dissimlar to where I am. It is pleasant, but not remarkable.

Pam, however, has a remarkable achievement in managing, as a bénévole (volunteer) the local branch library in Armaille: she manages the other volunteers, and has been responsible for collecting and cataloguing. We in the UK, at least in Buckinghamshire, are going down the volunteer route so we could well study this model as a way forward.

At the suggestion of my friend John Charles, I went along to sing at the festival of the Assumption at Pontmain, one of the Virgin's several destinations in 19th century Fran ce. The story is that in 1871, in the middle of the Franco Prussian war, with Prussian troupe storming west, and during a bitterly cold winter, the Virgin appeared to several children with a message of reassurance.

The result was the construction of a large basilica, with stained glass in all different shades of blue, and the establishment of Pontmain as a centre of pilgrimage. The mass was very well attended; it was a big outdoor affair with the altar on the steps of the basilica, thus affording me a ringside seat for the proceedings. During the singing of the Taize Magnificat, sung as a round, the congregation started clapping - happy clappy Catholic style, which I found very moving. One young black priest was obviously having to keep his limbs in check, because he wanted to dance out of sheer joy! Whilst there are many ways in which religion can be harmful, to see people exhibiting genuine happiness is very life enhancing.

That day was a genuinely happy and blessed day, which ended up with John and John Charles. It just happens from time to time in life that one meets up with people with whom one knows one is going to be friends - like the Harrises whom Sandy and I met in Sicily - and John and John Charles are definitely in that category. You never seem to run out of things to talk about, or common interests or experiences.

Down to earth with a crash

Often, during very busy periods, one longs for a time when one is not at the mercy of a very exacting schedule. The choral course was a bit like that - very busy, especially if one also had a house and dogs to see to. I am not sure even if car troubles had not intervened, and I had a forced period of being dependent on others for lifts, I would have been able to keep up the pace.

Well, I found myself longing for periods of pottering, book reading, télévision watching and generally loafing about my house, with the odd potter down to the village, much in the same way that a busy working mother must find herself longing for a good night's sleep. But, thanks mostly to the car, the pleasant loafing time did not happen. For one thing it might in theory be possible to have a pleasant stroll, but having to combine exercising one's dogs with buying groceries does not constitute a potter, if one of the dogs is not easy to walk with.

Honda's idea of walks and mine are different. My idea is to take dogs who walk obendiently at my side, then as I let them off have a jolly good sniff round doing their own thing and always come back when called. Honda's idea is to pull ahead for her life's worth (she might be missing something?) and then when I put her on a long lead she charges off, this time legitimately, because I want to give her a bit of freedom, but she is still pulling on the lead.

One of the tasks I accomplished on the Monday morning was the collection of a parcel at the post officd (it only opens for two hours in the morning) which was as 'figure of 8' dog lead which ties round the dog's neck and then round the dog's nose. I was really exciteD a) to have completed and b) to have got a solution which might work. It does work in the sense that it prevents dogs pulling, but they dont like the way it covers the nose. So when I now take H for a walk, I am always having to balancd her dislikd of the Halti with my dilike of her pulling. I tried to persuade her to listen to reason, but did not get very far.

Any way, having at least got her a lead where there was a small chance she might give me a slight respite from her usual pulling, I felt a sense of achievement.

That slight triumph was short-lived - I mean not the fact that I had bought Honda a lead which solved her pulling problem, although it hasnt, but I then discovered that the insurance hadn't rung me, so I rang the insurance broker who said I should chase the AA, which I did and from whom I got little clear result. So in the end I spoke with the garage direct and persuaded them to come up with a written estimante. Thank heavens for speaking French! The next day the phoned to say they needed some special implement to check the tyres which we enventionally found our was the wheel locks, but for the moment I felt in a deep linguistic morass.

Jean Charles very kindly came to lunch to take me to Rennes airport, and I picked up a little Renault Twingo, the cheapest hire car I could find, which got me around when my car was being repaired. The garage emailed me through an estimante late Tuesday night, which I forwarded to the insurers.

Waiting for the insurers then became a nightmare, not because they took particulalry long - in fact, I think Service was the model of customer support. My friend Simon said that I should sell it off as scrap metal, and buy a new car, several of which he found. However, it would have entailed a trip back to england which would have been costly and difficult to leave the dogs when so many people o away and the kennels are full.

When they came back to me on Thursday with a settlement of over £24000, I was relieved and overjoyed and told the garage to get on with mending m car.Hsd the insurance want me to write jt off, I would have had to go back the UK to get a new one, which would have been a great hassle, although my dear friend Simon proposed several cars to me, which was a great help.

Dinan

Today was a glorious mellow summer day, and I went to Dinan. Dinan is a very famous little town in Brittany, beautifully situated on the River Rance which leads to St Malo, and just over the border into Cotes D'Amor.

It is just at that point in the geography of the river where the latter is sufficiently wide to be dramatic, and have a long bridge crossing, but not too close to the sea to have relinquished its beautiful shore-line, undulating wooded banks with that combination of deciduous and coniferous trees, which gives Brittany countryside that peculiarly satisfying geometrical outline, with a combination of curves and points. I wish I could have taken some photos, unfortunately there was no way of stopping so I have plagiarized the following picture from Wikipedia commons.

Unfortunately, the powers that be have decided to make the N176, the major route over Northern Brittany, one lane only in a crucial area which caused a huge 'bouchon' which meant that a journey of just over an hour took two hours. As I hadn't arranged cover for the dogs, that rather curtailed my time in Dinan. Also, a mental note to self was made not to travel far on a weekend in August.

Dinan is, according to the guide books and the tourist 'blather', 'well preserved' with narrow, old cobbled streets and timber-framed buildings. I won't argue with that description, except to point out that whilst the old buildings have been preserved, it has been done in a way that the town seems to be self consciously touristy, with more or less every building in the centre dedicated to some form of tourist entrapment, whether it is a restaurant, an ice cream parlour, a luxury goods shop, or a souvenir shop. The town seems to be saying, 'Look at me, I'm pretty', rather than just getting on with its business, or letting us imagine how it would have got on with its business in the past.

It that, it rather resembles the centre of St Albans, which is very upmarket, lots of boutique shops, a total contrast to Tring which is equally historic but seemingly quite unaware of the fact: the high street boasts a couple of hardware shops, a couple of dress shops (not exhorbitantly expensive) a newsagent, a stationer, several estate agents, and a funeral parlour.

As mentioned, time was limited, but I did managed to see the St Malo church, which is the epitome of the High Gothic tsyle, and which has some really fascinating stained glass windows, 19th century, depicting the life of the town. After that, needing something to eat and drink, I had some muscles in a restaurant where I saw another lady sitting on her own eating muscles, which gave me confidence.

After that a wander round the town, back to the car park, then a beautiful cross country drive through Combourg and Tremblay, feeling very happy and content to have a house in this part of the world.

The choral course

Well, quite a lot has happened since I last posted - a really wonderful, but totally exhausting, musical experience, new friends, and an encounter with a lorry which proved pretty disastrous.

The choral course was the Festival of Jean Langlais, the blind French composer who produced (amongst other things) considerable organ and choral music. The idea was to get together enthusiastic singers together to rehearse a number of pieces mostly from the core English choral répertoire, with a few French pieces, for a couple of concerts and a Mass.

The 'musical director' was Malcolm Archer, a distinguished organist, choral conductor and above all composer (one of whose pieces, 'Finally brethren', we performed). He was truly inspirational: exacting, but encouraging, and knowing exactly how to communicate the music through his body and gestures. So much so that one hardly noticed the hectic schedule of rehearsals - 9.45 to 11, 11.30 to 12.30, and 15.00 to 16.30.

There was plenty of time for socializing - there was coffee, and lunch in the local restaurant, who did us proud. There were also events in the evening - a buffet supper on the first night, an organ recital on the second, at a church commemorating one the many places where Mary appeared, and a soirée musicale, which featured many excellent performances by people whose skill left one feeling at the same time inspired and a long way behind.

All the people one talked to were interesting, and I didn't find it difficult that a lot of people had come together and I hadn't or that a lot of people were taking up acquainances from previous years. Some how just about everybody I talked to we seemed to have a lot to say to one another, from Mireiile, whom I talked to a lot in English and French at lunch time, to Jean, who had been at my school, to the lady who lived in Italy with a northern husband, whom I talked at the last meal.

Altogether I was having a blissful summer at St Germain, then on the Friday something happened to bring me down to earth with a bang, literally, or rather a gréât scraping of métal. I have been taking, and picking up, my dogs to a kennels, in the direction of Parigne, in the opposite direction of La Fentenelle, but on Wednesday and thursday evening, the woman had been late so I decided to leave my dogs at home on Friday, and visit them at midday, which I was doing. I had awoken that morning being very tired, and going down with a cold, I had also had voice coaching and was full of that, and, as I suppose, nervous of the concert.

My memories of what events were before the accident, I am rather hazy on; I had decided to take a previous turn and then ahot past if - perhaps an indication of the state of my mind - but the next thing I knew was a sensation of my car colliding with a large lorry, and it was as if the steel of the lorry was a knife that suddenly sliced through my car (passenger lights side)

Immediately after it happend and I was limping across to somewhere safe to park, what was going through my mind was 'oh no, this isn't happening'. Several people stopped offering cups of tea, French (fortunately I do, though not in shock). Several people asked me if I had seen the lorry, of which I had no recollection, making me feel that I had just careered into it in its own path, but from the drawings the little lorry driver i think I was on the turn left lane with its arrows, and must have strayed slightly over into the path of the lorry, who was in any case travelling very fast.And were the people asking if I had seen the lorry implying that I should have or was there a suggestion that it had zoomed up so fast as if from nowhere?

Anyway, after filling in a form which stated that the parties had agreed on the fault of the accident, and a kind English man changed the wheel for me,I managed to drive the car back to the house, where I was treated to a lot of sympathy and 'calins' by Nelson, who offered me one of his precious tennis balls. There ensued the normal volley of phone calls, to the AA to get the vehicle towed to a garage, to the course to explain my absence that afternoon, and to the insurance.

Everyone was really sympathetic, but the real knight in shining armour prize must go to my new - and much valued - friend John-Charles Tanner, whom I had originally met the previous October. My friend Miranda and I were waiting to board the boat and I was wandering about for fresh air, looking out for people with dogs so that I could pump them on how their dogs survived, and what was the best crossing. I wasn't sure if John Charles was English or French - he spoke with me in a highly cultured English accent and his dog in fluent French (it's a French dog). Anyway, as the conversation strayed from dogs to other stuff, we found that we had houses close to one another, his being in Fougeres.

So, we struck up a correspondence by email, initiated rather nervously on my part, during which we told me about Brenda and the course and the rest is well, history.

In addition to phoning the AA, insurance etc. I also thought about whom I could call locally; I did not feel like telling the neighbours because the whole thing did not show me in a very good light, after all. And I had hardly any friends here - apart from John Charles; there were others, but they usually lived further south. It was decided by the fact that I didn't have my papers with the numbers for the course, and knew he would have Brenda's number.

Anyway John proved extremely useful, picking me up from my house to go to the Friday night concert, where I managed to commit myself OK considering the circonstance,and there was a large party at the Sale Polyvalente at which I consumed three glasses of Champagne

On the saturday night, I had managed to get some people to agree to pick me up, but when thunder threatened, I called it off - i didn't want anyone to take risks for me. So when I got a call from this pleasat couple (at least he was, I think she was a bit fed up) who were trying to find me, and had not got the message. I was, however, pleased to enjoy more time spent at the course, and that concert that evening was just a marvellous expérience.

Despite an unpromising rehearsal, and a rushed meal, during which time I ended up with Malcolm archer and the scholars,all of us in search of a decent meal when most people had brought picnics, the evening performance was one of those occasions when everybody seems to suddenly forget their tiredness and just let the music speak. For me, it was like a mystical expérience, when I forgot myself and was able just to, as it were, give myself over to Malcolm almost in an act of faith, forgetting my need to study the music which, no doubt, were I a better musicien, I would have remembered.

After the performance, there was an post-concert drink with Judith and David and another couple, and it was midnight by the time I was back in La Revenuais, greeted by a couple of 'presents' from the dogs which were entirely my fault, having left them for so long. On Sunday, there was a performance of the Jonathan Dove mass at Parish Mass at La Fontenelle, followed by a lunch at the Salle Polyvalente which was really lovely, beautifully prepared and a lovely chance to talk with some members of the group whom I had only met briefly. It was so lovely to be with a group of people with whom one automatically had so much in common - not just singing, but a certain educational level and an interest in culture, travel etc.

Blackout

Sunday 21st July Well, there I was philosophizing about my existential angst and feeling that I had is sort of sorted, and then a new test of my self sufficiency emerged in the form of electricity outage. A frantic hunt for a large torch ensued followed by a visit to The Neighbour to confirm that this was not just a misfortune that had struck my house – needless to say it was not, we are in the midst of some rather terrifying storms and the whole hamlet, and possibly the village, is without electricity. It’s banal to say that we don’t realize how dependent we are on electricity. Light, TV and the Internet all depend thereon. Gas I do have, so can cook. To sum it up, I have the essentials, but not my entertainment – reading, TV and the Internet, and I’m sorry to be (probably) missing The White Queen on TV to which I was much looking forward. However, there is also a sense in which this is rather exciting and comforting – at least I have my bed to lie on, my dear dogs round me (not literally), a house that keeps out the elements, and a light to read by. It’s a sense of paring down to life’s basics, and living as people used to live, which has a certain novelty value (which I am sure would/will pale if it goes on for more than 24 hours). Today I went to an Elevage (which I suppose means a display) of Brittany spaniels in Saint Lo, an uninspiring little town in lower Normandy, on the borders of the River Vire. I met a nice Englishman, his less pleasant wife who told me that Honda was terribly thin (which I had suspected, but the vets in both countries seemed quite happy), and I also saw her breeder. Perhaps the nicest thing was seeing a lot of other Brittanies, which would have been nice in itself, but what was really nice was that they all pulled on the lead, and I heard other tales of them going off to the next county. I met another English couple who had recently lost a Brittany, and were just about to buy another. I did manage to get from them that the first four years had been hell, but that things had calmed down after that (presumably the Brittany in question had lived well beyond her fourth birthday). Some one else said that if you saw a Brittany walking to heel, it had been tranquillized. I went back via Coutances, famed for its beautiful cathedral, into which I needless to say could not take my dogs, so they and I sat on the steps and contemplated (at least I did) the breathtaking gothic interior. Then home in horrendous heat and this storm, which is still going on, and still no electricity. Which just about brings me up to date – not much more to say, really. I think it will be no White Queen tonight, just more George East on Brittany. So, just a hunt for my slippers (at least in this dark, I do have an excuse for losing things) and off to bed with George.