Another month has gone, taking
with it 2017 and we’re already half way through January. Where does the time go?
The three adult goats who live with my neighbours clearly think the grass is greener my side of the wall and have been outwitting all attempts to keep them in their own area.
This is a photo of them back with the babies after I'd herded them up with a garden broom and shut them into their garden. They returned to me several more times that day but finally are contained in their own field again. Goats are incredible escape artists ...
Luckily the weather was not
extreme over Christmas and my son, Matthew, came over as planned which was
lovely. We went out to eat on Boxing Day
at Le St Antoine in Plemet and had a delicious meal there.
He came without his mobile because he forgot it was charging in his kitchen.
On 27 December, he left for
Roscoff just before 1300hrs and five minutes later I went to get my car keys to
drive to the shops and found they weren’t on the hook. He had put a new satnav
in my car that morning and used the keys for that. I didn’t panic immediately
as I have a spare set. I looked for the
spare set and they weren’t on the hook, nor in any bag of mine nor in my
pockets. They weren’t down the sofas or under the sofas. They weren’t on the
table or my computer table. They weren’t anywhere. He had taken both sets of my
car keys with him!
Of course, if he had remembered
to bring his phone I could have rung him as he was then only five minutes away. Until three weeks ago I had two cars so it
wouldn’t have been such a problem but have just sold my Land Rover. I am in the sticks and not
having a vehicle is not an option. I panicked and then finally, I calmed down -
just a little bit. I phoned Brittany Ferries at Roscoff and Florence was trés
sympa and understood immediately that she needed to stop him getting on the
boat with them.
My wonderful Breton neighbours,
Paulette and Christian drove me to Roscoff and I collected both sets of keys.
Florence was no longer on duty but one of the other girls said that I should
have seen my son’s face when they told him why he been pulled out of the queue –
clearly he knew there was a big problem for which he was responsible.
Another bee keeper Robert, his
Mum, Elsie, and a friend Liz – also into bees – came for lunch and to discuss
moving some of my bee hives to the pond field.
It is not often that my table is cleared of the things I dump on it, but needs must for guests.
This moving of hives will mean that I won’t have so many bees in one area when I am
dealing with them and I should feel more comfortable about that. Robert and Liz are coming back to do the move
with me on the last Sunday in January. I
shall close up the hives the previous evening, before I go off to the Pantomime
in Gouarec, so that the hives will be safe to move the following morning.
An email arrived with an unexpected
booking for Small Cottage and the French guests arrived on 30 December for two
nights. At 1915hrs, upon returning from
their day out, they invited me to spend the evening with them. A very pleasant evening with nibbles, drinks
and good conversation seeing in the New Year.
How kind of them!
Both the urinary consultant and
the gastro oncologist gave me an all clear the first week of the year after I
had experienced worrying symptoms. Many
thanks to the French health service for the prompt appointments and
verdicts. I just have one more
appointment, next week, which is with the dermatologist for a possible skin cancer
on my forehead, so fingers crossed.
Aperos Sunday last week at, Ronan
and Fanny’s with four other neighbours too.
Always good to get together with others in the village.
We had nibbles, charcuterie, prawns, galette
de rois and kir and lots of wine – a good thing I only had to walk 50 metres
home …
I had another invitation from a
more distant neighbour, from the farm that used to have slippy slates on the
roof and now has no roof.
Isabelle took
over about eighteen months ago and is slowly renovating a total ruin while
living in a caravan. She has a lot of
work to do and wanted to show me what she has achieved so far.
I don’t envy her, I remember how inconvenient everything can be and she is not using much paid help whereas I did. She has horses on the surrounding fields – fourteen I think – so has a lot on her plate.
On warmer afternoons, I’ve spent quite
a bit of time watching the hives to see how the bees are doing and am so glad
that all eight hives have bees coming and going – not lots – but enough to make
me feel that everything’s as it should be for this time of year. This afternoon as I left the field I met a
couple walking in the lane. Crystal
works in SuperU, so I recognised her, and her husband, Gilles, came and talked bees
with me for half an hour, he is a bee keeper too with hives in St Nicolas du
Pélem, three miles away, or perhaps only two miles as the bee flies.
There have been lots of hunt sounds in and around the village, both shooting and dogs barking. Here are three hunters at the top of my lane happy to pose for the photo. Their dog had a huge bell under its chin so shouldn't get left behind because it's lost. Sounded like one of the cows with bells in the mountains in Switzerland.
Yesterday I drove to St Servais to
swop eggs with another hen keeper. I
wanted to have different genes in my flock and have put fifteen eggs from Noeline’s
girls with four from my girls into the incubator in the kitchen. Her
hens are the standard red hens, so good layers of brown eggs. Hopefully, on or around 2 February I should
be hearing baby chicks cheeping as they emerge from their shells.
Bit of a book clear out in the afternoon
so I could accommodate the most recently purchased volumes without putting up
yet more shelves. I selected 100 books
that I could bear to lose and advertised them.
Sue, who fund raises for an animal charity, collected the three boxfuls this
morning along with two paintings. My shelves
are looking better and I feel very virtuous.
A sunrise and sunsets in the village this week
The
The first seeds of the year have
been sown - tomatoes – Gardeners’
Delight and Moneymaker in a small unheated propagator in the polytunnel. I am usually late planting my tomatoes so
thought I’d try and get a headstart this year.
Also planted out a common thyme I bought in Point Vert and had divided
into three. I’ve topped up on all my
seeds from Jardinage Naturel and can’t wait to get gardening again when the
weather allows it.
This is Étoile, a cow in my lane, who Fanny, my neighbour, has owned for years and years. She loves having her head stroked and being scratched between her ears.
Three things I like:
1. The Christmas decorations are down – I do
like to get my house back to normal.
2. The incubator humming in the corner of the
kitchen with promises of new life.
3. Making it through to another year - oh and finding the pieces for this bracelet which I'd bought and put safely somewhere!
