Hoping to spend some time in France this year, I was meandering through some of my blog posts. This one is from July 2015:
In the heat of the afternoon it
has become my habit to take a nap. Sometimes I fall asleep over the computer because I'm up at six to walk Tim while it is cool, but sometimes I take myself to the bedroom and lie down. It is cool
there on the west side of the house, and as this terrible heat continues, that
is welcome. It wasn't long before Dh crashed through the door, Tim barking
hysterically in the distance, and the news that, like Houston, we had a problem. "The cows are in the garden and
Tim's setting them off." Exit husband, pursued by moi.
We were virtually trapped inside.
I suppose we could have gone downstairs, through the garage and legged it in the opposite direction, but where would we
have gone? We did not dare let Tim out, for the mother
might have decided to protect her young bullock, or ….anyway, we stayed inside and phoned Tom, who lives not far away. Thankfully he knew the farmer to whom the
cows belong and volunteered to phone him. He lives even closer than Tom.
Dh suspected said farmer would arrive with a tractor and trailer to take them away. I imagined two men and cattle dogs. Dh whizzed down the drive on the little bike and unhooked the chain across the drive for him. He hadn’t got back to the house when a small Renault van showed up at the far side of the west field, slowed and bounced across the rough grass to park in the shade of a walnut tree. Out got one man dressed in tee shirt and short shorts, very tanned, very dark, a veritable Rafael Nadal lookalike but ten years older. Bonjours all round and big smiles – ours of relief to see him, naturally. I had stayed on the upstairs balcony with Tim and Dh went over to greet the farmer, who raised his cap to me as gentlemen used to do in England and old gentlemen still do. "Bonjour, madame," he said with a big smile.
He was as good
as his word, too. Twenty minutes later we heard the tap tap tap of a hammer and
saw him making good the gap where the cattle had simply wandered down the stream
and onto mill land – from where there was open access to the asparagus
field and the road and crepes at Clermont-de-Beauregard for all we knew.