Rain

Much cooler here.  We came home yesterday to a house cold and smelling of holiday cottages; a mixture of dust and old floors and stone and plaster. Trapped summers, hidden in the walls...

Here it has rained all day and it has been gloomy.  The garden has taken advantage again and has run riot, so I will need to get out with the shears and the strimmer.  We had gigantic courgettes becoming marrows; I will roast them for antipasti or might stuff them with rice and peppers.  The tomatoes look hopeful as do the peppers.  And the olive trees (small olive trees) which lost their leaves over the hard winter we had have finally both come back.  I read recently that all olive trees need is silence and sunshine, but perhaps the recent wet weather helped as well!

Abroad Thoughts from Home

What will I remember?  The heavy woods, the empty straight roads, the dry golden grass.  Eddie's barn, its apex sixty feet above my head, great sweeps of tiles, its beams eleven metres long.  The beaten earth floor, the sunlight.  The vertical thunderstorms over the valley of the L'Asse river.  Limoges on an empty Sunday.  Tiling the pig sty roof as the Romans would have done it, wooden beams on rough walls, tiles hung on thin laths, each tile held in place by the support of its neighbours and a thumb's smudge when the clay was still wet, thumb prints still visible today.  Lizards.  Monastic living at long tables of food, candlelight and beer.  The church clock chiming twice for the field workers.  Clouds of swifts, house martins and swallows, a young fledgling buzzard somewhere in the woods over the valley, the same mewing sound here this afternoon from the buzzards fledged in these woods.  What will I remember?  Sunlight and painted shutters, wooden floors and ancient dust.  And that barn...

French Grey

Montmorillon is our nearest town. It seems typically French, an old core and modern industrial suburbs of identikit French streets. We went to the market in the old town this morning, lots of fresh vegetables and mushrooms, oysters, fresh cakes and noodles. A washed pale blue day hot after last night's thunder, the sky above the market square full of swifts.

There is a melancholy to France that I cannot place. Their streets seem gloomy sometimes, their cemeteries extensions of the streets or the other way round; their older pop music seems brushed with sadness and loss, their modern tat shops sell small cemetery plaques, as if this is a country obsessed with death. Yet this is not the real mood of place so where does it come from? My reaction to urban landscape - I will think on this further.

I had forgotten how heavily wooded it is here. The fields of golden stubble are surrounded by thick woods and the straight roads drive through mile after mile of forest. Sunlight through July leaves, dappled onto dry forest floor, bone-dry grasses. And yet the association of 'forestiére' sauces, creamy-rich with mushrooms or heavy with sausages of wild boar meat, red with tomatoes and blood.

July Storms

An astonishing thunderstorm last night. It was hot all afternoon and no cooler as the sun went down. I wrote the house journal on the terrace with a beer and a candle, watching slow, heavy lilac clouds building on the other side of the valley. Distant rumbles and tall flashes of lightning far away to begin with, but near enough to light the heavy clouds in great vertical flashes, turning the clouds a hundred grey colours from a deep angry almost-black to a brilliant white. The rain was torrential, the wind very strong, but only in short bursts. Loud constant rumbles of thunder as the storm passed overhead, bright lightning flashes and then flashes muffled by the clouds. It went on for an hour and a half or more as we slowly dozed and settled into deeper sleep.

It reminded me that Thomas Hardy's grandmother always remembered what a hot summer it had been for the French Revolution, presumably for the storming of the Bastille in 1789.

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.

Bastille

The fourteenth of July and we are on our way to France.  We are staying in Dover, as Shelley did, and will arrive on French soil the day after Bastille Day, as Wordsworth did; I like such historical links, and as a writer feel I am walking in the footsteps of giants.  

The south of England looked parched and barren compared with the fields on the Borders.  There are far more hay fields and the gold of the hay and the parched gold of the wayside grass seems to make a landscape - a fieldscape - of golden grass and heavy green trees.  Wiltshire always seems to be made up of long low hills of grass, how I imagine Kansas.  Then suddenly we are in Dover and then on the A2, as Shelley was nearly two centuries ago.  And tomorrow, France...

The Outside World

On Friday we went to an insipid arts event at Croft Castle.  The work was all over the grounds and we walked past the castle to the fields.  The hay had been cut recently, and the swallows were skimming the stubble for insects, inches above the ground.  They were oblivious to the hordes of art people, and were quartering the large lawn in front of the buildings for more food.  And on the doorstep of the castle I heard tweeting and looked up to see a house martin's nest about four feet over my head, with a small martin peering out; the next minute the adult swept in and fed it and then was gone.  There was an irregular row of mud nests in the crevice of the doorframe.  Then on the way out of the estate we had to pull off the road for the tractor, beginning to bring the wrapped hay bales in from the fields.  

Stair Moments

I love the idea of a window on a staircase, a place to pause on the up or the down, a place to stand with armfuls of washing or ironing and have a moment away from the house and to take in the world outside.   Last night I paused at the top of the stairs and looked across the valley towards New Radnor.  The evening was cloudy and sultry, threatening rain, but I caught a moment when the sun came out strongly and the hedge-trees and tall bushes on the field boundaries sent long shadows across the field; a moment and it was gone.  

Rainy Season

Today was the church fete, but the rain held off until tea time.  We had guests so didn't go, but it seems a very British thing, a summer fete, something elegant and dignified and precarious and ever so slightly silly.  Instead we wandered around the village in the stuffy warmth, watching small boys with water pistols and having a glass of beer overlooking the valley.  We showed them the church and I sat in the porch with the dog, thinking about how many other 600 year old porches I had sat in, and how short a period of its life my sit was.  

Now it is 10.15 and I am listening to the steady silvery roar of the rain in the garden, listening to it from different rooms, from different open windows.  Warm rain is a summer pleasure; I went out to check the cloche'd plants were getting enough water and the air was damp and warm, even at 9pm.  An early dusk but we need the rain.  The solid iron box of the wood-burning stove becomes the heart of the house again, warming copper pipes and the surrounding stonework; turned right down to nothing it will burn slowly all night, to spring to life again when we go down in the morning.  Stone responds well to water, cooling the rooms in summer and retaining the stove's heat in the winter.  It is an evening for the soft ruddy glow on bare walls, candlelight and open windows.  

Summer's Melancholy

One consequence of keeping a journal like this one is a realisation of the passing of time.  Already we are nearly halfway through my imposed sense of summer; already it is impossible to do things in June this year, already the early summer has slipped away.  Sports days and end-of-terms have come and gone, at least for most of the schools around here.  Up north I think they might break up next Friday, so perhaps it is possible to trace a journey around the country, catching end-of-term after end-of-term, as a friend used to do at school in Liverpool. But we are still eating strawberries, and seasons cannot be imposed onto the calendar, or rather the calender cannot be fitted over the seasons, so it will still be warm in September, where I began these seasonal thoughts four years ago!    

Evening Stillness

A cooler evening tonight, but a fine sunset over the bare hills of the Radnor Forest.  It has been cool enough during the days recently to relight the fire in the hall, which provides us with hot water.  The fire is the heart of an old house like this one; electricity just isn't the same.  

A rare trip to Ludlow this morning.  The hedges all the way are full and shaggy, lots of young growth, lots of tall grass in the verges.  I love the green darkness that comes with this summery growth, the suggestion of dark silences, watchful green depths.  Green Man thoughts.  The roads were red-yellow with field-muds turned to dust, as it is haymaking time and the bales are stacked in the fields awaiting collection.  On the back roads sometimes we have seen the huge combine harvesters, usually in two cumbersome parts.  The first is a tractor pulling the blades, as long as a glider, folded and wafer-thin; behind comes the harvester itself, swerving and nervy, with the thundering capering grace of a tamed elephant.

From the Garden

I was lucky enough to spend most of the evening in the garden.  I have mentioned that the grass is taking advantage of my good nature and has run riot.  Tonight I strimmed the top half of the garden, the vegetable patch, and the newly-shorn area looks bigger and better managed.  I lifted the first of the shallots, that we bought as sets from Presteigne a few months ago, and they are now drying in the rear hall.  I also repotted some chard seedlings that have struggled in one of the vegetable beds and only just fought off the slugs; I did the same yesterday with some rocket plugs that had been decimated.  I suppose the garden is at its height, at least for this year.  The lavender have all flowered, some spectacularly, and most of the rescue plants in the nursery bed - plants that have been in pots since we left Southport two years ago - have recovered, flowered and put on growth. 

The days are still long, and at 10pm tonight it was only just dusk.  It is noticeably cooler than it was this time last week, and we were surprised by a hot spell this afternoon; we realised how easily we had slipped back into jeans and heavier shirts.  

Grass Tales Again

Some mornings the valley is completely hidden by mist, and the hill seems to float above the valley.  Only the tops of the trees are visible.  On other days the fields are obscured by moving sheets of rain, and the hills across the valley are indistinct or invisible.  This morning we woke to sulky showers of heavy rain, hiding the valley in cloud, obscuring the bald hills. It has turned wet and cooler after a week or two of warm dry weather.  The grass loves it and is growing at a fantastic rate.  I have never lived anywhere with so much grass and have become mildly obsessed by it, from letting it grow to cutting it short, from trimming the shaggy edges around the veg beds to letting the seed heads grow tall.  The wild flowers have a slow passage through the season, from the hawkweed and the mountain cornflowers starting to fade to the nursery flowers such as the rescue-lavenders coming into flower.  And after a fortnight of flowering the roses are all but finished.  

The Perfect Summer's Day

It is not possible to devise a perfect day without being selfish, without ignoring the reality of life; work, children, loved ones, responsibilities.  But this is my blog so here goes.  

With the warm sun streaming in through the window I would wake quite early, so I would take my breakfast back to bed with yesterday's papers then take a long hot bath. The housework would have been done, so I would be free to dress simply - I remember one summer when I just threw on a pair of shorts and a clean shirt and I was out - and go out into the garden.  Summer is a time for slowing the pace, so the rest of the morning - if there was any left - I would read in the garden.  A long lunch - French cheese and grapes and crusty bread, maybe a beer or a glass of wine - then a nap under the trees. More reading and more sitting in the garden, then a light evening meal outside with a beer or three and maybe more wine.  Then I would sit with my glass and watch the sun go down, lighting the garden candles as the light failed and the swifts and swallows were replaced by bats and owls from the woods.  The garden would grow gently chilly and I would be driven indoors, to go to bed at about 10pm.  

But in truth I would probably be restless, if not bored.  I am not used to such leisure, such deliberate inactivity.  I am not one of those people who sits on a beach on their holidays, I need things to do.  I would like to be that quiet reader in the garden with his wine, but his inactivity would probably irritate me!

Monsoon

The warm weather seems to have broken.  Last night and for most of today we have had heavy showers, which have refilled the water butt and drenched the garden, which was much needed.  The grass everywhere is very tall, the chard are picking up, the courgettes are starting to flower and the broccoli seems to have established itself.  I always plan to deep-fry courgette flowers with rice and mushrooms inside as I ate this once in Rome; but here I am still cooking on a camping stove so it's probably a waste.  

Warm wet days and nights have their own beauty.  I love reading at night with the window open, or lying in bed by candlelight with the window open listening to the steady rain.  I left the kitchen windows open the other night and left the light on by accident; going in to prepare supper the ceiling was alive with moths and small insects, but I ignored them and left the window as it was and they had all gone by the morning.

Grass Tales

For one group at least the summer holidays are already over.  Our friend Katie arrived early this morning to collect the chickens, six Silkies who have had their holiday and have now been taken home.  We enjoyed having them. They lived on the top field in a large 'pen' or area chicken-wired off from the rest of the garden, and had complete freedom within it.  They ate garden scraps and some corn.  Silkies are winter layers apparently so we didn't get many eggs.  

But now they are gone the archaeology of their landscape is revealed.  The pen was built across a pattern of cut  grass, i.e. a perimeter path of short grass around a large island of uncut grass, what I optimistically called 'the wildflower meadow'.  The chicken wire fence cut across this and the path on that side and the 'meadow' were left to the chickens.  Like a miniature Berlin Wall, the fence changed the landscape; on this side the old path was lost as the whole lawn was cut short (ish) and on the chickens' side it all began to disappear beneath new growth and chicken trampling.  Now it has gone, the line is marked by a narrow band of taller grass, unable to be pecked by the birds or reached by my mowing.  The coop too has left a yellow square of deadish grass around a tuft that did get some light.  The chickens' field is like one of those ancient villages seen from the air during a drought.

I am thinking along these silly lines because of a recent article in the paper about the old landscape of the Berlin Wall and the border between East and West Germany, now dismantled.  600 miles long and (I think) up to a mile wide, it is the largest wildlife reserve in Germany and over forty years it attracted an astonishing array of wildlife rare elsewhere, simply because it was inaccessible to people.  

Missed (The Fourth of July)

No fireworks here for Independence Day, despite a scattering of Americans in the area.   It reminded me that July is a month for celebrating revolutions, whether American or French.   Today the warm weather sputtered out, it was cooler this morning and then this evening we had an almighty rainstorm.  No wind, and the rain was coming down so heavily it was bouncing on the church roof, creating a sort of mist about a foot off the slates.  It is now (at 9.45pm) starting to get dark and the sky is still overcast.  The garden is full of a wild, wet darkness.  

I may have mentioned that I have left the garden and hardly cut any grass or hedges since the spring.  There is a practical reason for this as we wanted to see what grew, and this afternoon we found a raspberry patch; or rather we found raspberry bushes in amongst brambles and sprawled hedge.  Free raspberries!  The grass has taken full advantage of my indolence and thrown up great long stems and long seedheads, making the top lawn look like a meadow.  The seedheads have a fascinating range of colour, from green-gold to red-gold and a polished bronze. On warm sunny evenings I can see the light between the house and the church, the seedheads forming a thin golden haze above the grass, the gnats dancing in the sunshine.  But not tonight.  

Summer Food

My thoughts turn to heavy food in the winter - soups and roasts, potatoes and root vegetables - and to the Mediterranean in the summer.  So the smell of basil made me think of pesto and tomatoes; when a friend came for a meal the other night I made a pesto-and-tomato salad to go with the creamy, cheesy tomato pasta, and a garlic bread; sticky with butter and oil, my hands smelled of garlic and basil and tomato juice.  We ripped the bread apart and made mouthfuls of pasta and sauce and bread.  And Alan brought a sack of Ludlow Gold, the local real ale, a light, powerful summer brew.  Golden ale, the association of summer.  

But for once, perhaps bowing to the formality of a guest for a meal, we ate it inside; as much as possible we are eating outside at the moment, enjoying the warm days and sunshine.  We have had temperatures of 31 degrees C, which is really warm for us.  It means endless watering but breakfasts outside.  Summer eating!

A Long Way from Italy

In ten days or so I will be halfway through my summer of June, July and August; the summer barely seems to have started and yet I have been in shorts and light shirts for some days now, my usual early summer insecurity about shorts long forgotten.

A seasonal awareness is about small things.  Choosing bathroom tiles we found ourselves on a Hereford trading estate on a blazing hot day, in a stuffy warehouse full of repro tiles.  But we also found a few boxes of genuine stone tiles, travertine and marble, pale slices of an Italian hillside; they looked like thick slices of bone.  The dust rubbed itself into my finger, this Italian road-dust, the ivory/cream fabric of the country itself.  And then, a five-minute dash into the supermarket for supplies and I brushed against some struggling basil plants in the reduced box; and in the middle of a hot afternoon and a busy shop the thick smell of basil was suddenly, briefly, everywhere; then it was gone.  

Lazy Days

There is a perceived, perhaps a remembered, laziness to summer days.  I was thinking of writing my perfect summer day and realised that a lot of it centred on doing nothing at all; reading, sitting, reading, probably a beer.  Perhaps this sense of slowness is a memory of childhood summer holidays, the best thing about the school year being the gaps between them.  Drowsy heat, bees in the borders, long afternoons sitting in the overgrown garden; the ideal summer day.  Yet how often are my days like this?  I get bored sitting, even sitting to read - but not to drink, I've noticed - so even a lazy day is made up of lots of things, of pottering.  Yet still the ideal remains, perhaps because it is unachievable and even unwanted.  

Having said that I made a great summer afternoon, as the weather has been so good.  We baked a chocolate cake this morning and I made lemonade after lunch then washed out a few washing-up liquid bottles so that the boys could have water fights.  Sunshine, water fights, lemonade, chocolate cake; what more is there to a summer afternoon?  Then as I was tidying the garden there was somebody playing the organ in the church over the road. But I am coming to realise that these things don't just happen, one must make them happen, then smaller accidental beautiful things will fit in to the pattern one has made.  

July

And now it is July and the run of settled, warm, occasionally wet weather has continued.  It feels like a proper summer.  Writing something like this has forced me to consider my day-to-day in a seasonal context, as if seeing every day through the prism of the season.  A good exercise, it has rooted me in the passing or turning of the year.  

A list of recent summery things, then; strawberries and cream, sports days, other people's holidays, the warm weather, Glastonbury and Wimbledon, lazy, stupid flies, the daily chore of watering the tomatoes and peppers, late late nights with daylight until 9.30 or 10pm, massively overgrown garden hedges, lavender flowers, shorts and no socks, every meal eaten outside... 

We do not have two pennies to rub together but the quality of our days is astonishing; and as if to prove it, my wife has just walked in with the first flowers of the Californian bluebells and the news that the courgettes have started to flower.  I am a lucky man.