Saturday 31 October 2009

Down the road, evening.

The blond Limousin bull is maturing, his neck and shoulders so big and curly he looks like a great red-tawny bison, even more like something from the walls of Lascaux caves.

Friday 30 October 2009

Down the road, early evening.

A breather from cooking.  The warm lavender evening more like August than late October.  A whoosh of starlings fly over the yellow trees.  Across the field jays cackle after acorns.

Sunday 25 October 2009

Up the road, afternoon.

'How's Anne?' I ask Marcel.

'She's resting in the car. In the sun.'

Indeed, the small car is on their forecourt, the old lady reposing in the sunny front seat.

Friday 23 October 2009

Up the road, afternoon.

By Marcel's, one dainty toadstool looks spray-painted gold. Later, I pick two good brown flatcaps, pushing through the chopped bracken in the verge, and take them back for tonight's soup.

Thursday 22 October 2009

Up the road, afternoon.

How do we live untroubled beneath the tyranny of clouds,
which, mocking our earth-bound coloured forms,
promise us the slant-lit kingdoms of Elysium,
then waste them with a darkened blast?

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Up the road, afternoon.

Out of the mudded maize stalks rise flocks of birds, voices rippling and chuckling: thrushes, larks, finches, but so mixed up and quick and winter-brown I can't tell them apart.

Monday 19 October 2009

Down the road, afternoon.

Now the maize is finally cut, things once lost are visible again. Squashed yellow cobs lie about the fields, and a passing car stirs thick dust up from the road.

Saturday 17 October 2009

Up the road, afternoon.

The copper coloured cockerel and with his gold and black hens, stroll rather listlessly in the orchard. The red of their combs is the same as the apples above them.

Wednesday 14 October 2009

Down the road, early morning.

To say the low mist's blue enough to stain you hands with, and every deadhead weed and cow-chewed cabbage stalk a sun-charged burning fuse, is not to be there.

Up the road, afternoon (Tuesday)

A sharp cry really sounding like 'peewit', a solitary lapwing flying over hard and fast, an early herald of the flocks which will chequer the fields later in the winter.

Friday 9 October 2009

Trédaniel plan d'eau, afternoon.

Shaggy ink caps push their quaint tall domes up through wet grassy weeds. I leave them to it, they are watery and tasteless, and I don't feel like mushrooms anyway.

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Down the road, afternoon.

A grey warm dull day, and I resent the jaunty Provencal colours of the maize. But Marcelle's and Victor's flowers are mad magenta and marigold, though battered by the wind.

Sunday 4 October 2009

Recycling bins, Moncontour.

The shouts of a football game drift over. A few young women (WAGs) stand in the rain alongside, their postures betraying a chilled boredom surely even great love can't offset?

Saturday 3 October 2009

Up the road, afternoon (Friday).

We meet the terrier pup alone in the road. I carry him home (receiving kisses) where he gets a smack. I wonder if that will persuade him to stay around.

Lamballe, round the lake, along the river, up the high street and over the square (Thursday).


After a long walk, eclairs and tarte aux cassis, hot chocolate for the bigger people. Iso uses Ilan's spoon, he his fingers. Molly has water in a white china bowl.