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Dog and mouse
The travellers are standing in the park on Melle market day. Tired eyed and wire-haired, grasping small cans of lager, one of them is holding onto a long piece of orange string with a brandy-coloured, sad-eyed Great Dane at the end. It is hot, even in the shade, and the dog is slathering long, stretching drops of clear saliva onto the weather-burnt grass.
The gardener
The main road takes you past the pineau vines, the farm and the feed mill towards the town. A narrower road, to the right, takes you into the village. In between is a triangle of long and lovingly tended garden – rows of late leeks, beans and onions; stalks and stems of verdant green among April’s fields of rape blossom.
Where there is hope
We’re back at the reclamation yard waiting for Claude and looking at the staircase we have bought for the barn. Handsome, ancient and made of oak, with wide treads and a scattering of (treated) woodworm, it is lying on its back: cleaned-up, but a little forlorn.
The reality of style
“We’re just loving the thought of living in provincial France…here’s some ideas to breathe chic French country style into your home …” Other than memories, the house is of no consequence to Madame. She’s oblivious to how it appears to British eyes.
The anniversary
Monsieur Arcault has cut white and purple lilac blossom from the garden. On the same morning each April, he takes his secateurs from the kitchen drawer, walks to the end of the potager and cuts an armful of flowery boughs, each one heavy with colour and heady spring scent.
Lost voices
Let the battle commence they say. But the real battle isn’t between the contestants; it’s between the united forces of the contestants and any song that isn’t French. And it’s also about my battle to recognise the songs from a combination of incoherent lyrics, curious interpretation and puzzling em-pha-s-is.
Finding home
Do you really chose your home, or does your home chose you? How many times had we taken the Armorique from Plymouth to Roscofff and the Brittany countryside and coastline to find our ‘wreck’? How many Breton estate agents’ doorways had we darkened? How many desperate sellers’ hopes had we raised so unnecessarily in pursuit of our dream?
Sunday lunch
Charcoal-coloured smoke is billowing out of the bread oven chimney puffing its way into the wind-brushed, overcast sky. The oak door to the stone building has been propped wide open. Inside, Jean-Claude is sitting on a long pine bench next to the oven door waiting for his ham to cook. He tells us he has 18 people coming for lunch the following day, all family. The ham’s a large one, it has to be to feed them all, and it’s far easier to cook it in the village bread oven than at home.
Trevor the sheep
Trevor stamps his right hoof on the ground. He’s challenging me with that look again; daring me to try and go near him. Trevor is big, grey-woolly white and handsome. You know where you are with him. You can tell by the way he looks at you with his long caramel eyes that he thinks all humans are ridiculous; even the ones who bring him food are ridiculous - just slightly less so.
Friendship
The car park has more foreign cars than French. The British bar opposite the square has blue-grey painted shutters. A blackboard is propped outside the door: there’s a pie and chip night on Thursday and a gospel service on Sunday.