A Letter from France

It feels as if we have been here forever. Brigeuil is a small village and typically French, red roofs and white shuttered houses, surrounded by miles of thick woods and fields. Owls at night and swifts and swallows during the day. Our days are marked by the church bells, which chime each hour twice for the field workers. We have been working on the house and have been out only rarely; to Montmorillon (the nearest town) for supplies and to Roni and Eddie's house in Les Clotures for a good lunch, cake, tea - and internet access! Their barn is huge, the size of a medieval church, steep tiled roofs and rough plaster walls, with cross-beams 11 metres long. It is attached to the house and has bats and house martins living in it. Their village is quiet and full of birds, their garden full of onions and herbs, tomatoes, lettuce, and sweetcorn. I walked along the rough track at their gate and found a field of sunflowers, and helped Eddie secure their vine to the barn wall; it is burdened with not-quite-ripe grapes.

We have been eating lots of cheese and drinking wine and French beer. At night we talk and eat well by candlelight. Warm, lazy, busy days.