The last few weeks

The Indie Author Online Festival  kicked off on Saturday, and my tiny piece came yesterday at 11am.

I never use Skype or Zoom, so I was nervous about the technology of using Streamyard, but it proved quite easy - except that my camera is obviously set to time out after 30 minutes.    It took me a little while to realise that all I had to do was click the mic/camera icon to reinstate it.

As for the content,  I think we should have done shorter snatches with more interplay between the personalities, but it seemed to go off quite well. I was surprised at the paucity of questions both in advance and during the hour we were live, because Regency is such a popular genre. In a way it is a pity that many people have gone back to work  this week - a pity only in the sense that our potential audience vanished!  I'm sure everyone is glad to go back to a life that is a good deal more normal than the last 9 weeks have been. 

Having said that, dog walking and a once weekly grocery shop has been the extent of my life lately, and it isn't that different from normal. The family is in Australia and we don't socialise all that much. Bill used to do the shopping at the supermarket 10 miles away, but somehow, I can't remember why, I got elected to do the shop at the local co-op half a mile away. I was there on the dot of opening 8am Wednesday morning and back home by 8.45! I think it might be difficult to persuade Bill back into the old way of him going to Tesco!

Walking Tim in the silence of lockdown was so different ~ only an occasional car, and birds singing.  Lots more walkers, joggers, cyclists than usual but they are pretty silent anyway. The air was brighter and much more pleasant. Of course we had the usual tearaways out in their ancient up car with its go-faster-stripes, streaking around the empty roads in defiance of the electronic sign at the roundabout at the bottom of the hill saying "Stay Home."

On the whole, for me,  the 9 weeks have gone pretty quickly. 

Lalinde

After my sad attempt at shopping in French supermarkets we decided to return home via Lalinde, which is a lovely little town on the Dordogne. It was 39 degrees at 11am and the heat hit us when we got out of the car. It was market day and the main car park was full of market stalls selling everything from strawberries to vintage dresses, but we found a spot by the lake.

We soon discovered the streets were too full of people and dogs to walk comfortably through with Tim, so we dived down a side-street. We stayed in the shade where we could as we made our way down to the pharmacie on the corner of the main square. DH and Tim stayed in the shade while I bought my Insect Ecran Familles. I asked for what I wanted in a mixture of French and charades, but the girl understood me! The Marie Rose cream they did not stock.

Across the road from pharmacie was the boulanger so I rushed in and bought some bread for lunch. Once I found Tim and DH again, lurking in the shade, we decided that the peace and quiet of home was very appealing. We drove to St Foy with the road to ourselves, and then on to St Felix and only met one other vehicle – naturally, in the most narrow part of the road.

Swimming this afternoon was amazing. The water was almost warm so I slid in without my usual hovering on the steps while I nerve myself for the cold shock of hitting the water. Delightful experience. How wonderful to have a pool of one’s own, even if it is for only a few weeks of the year.

As we cooked our beef burgers on the barbie (before you scoff, let me say that French burgers are so much better than the usual English fare. Here, they are made of beef and nothing else), we heard a tractor and a dreadful crashing noise. Sounded as if the tractor was in the field at the back the house, and when we looked across the lower patio, it almost was. The tractor was cruising the far side of the stream and bashing down the undergrowth, so now there is a view across into the fields beyond the stream. Since the stream itself is barely an inch deep though still running fast and clear, I could be tempted to get my wellies and explore next time Tim and I walk around the lake.

Our early morning walk was concluding about half six or so when we stepped onto the road between the fields and stopped in amazement. A deer bounded into view only ten or twelve yards away. Fortunately I had Tim on the lead just in case some white van drove along (they all drive like maniacs here). So we stood absolutely still, even Tim, and the deer stared back at us for a few seconds and then trotted off and bounded back into the woodland. I think it was a small Munckjack (?) certainly not a roe or red deer, but a lovely thing to see.

Shopping en France

According to the thermometer in Lalinde, it was 39 degrees today (22nd June) at 11am. Still no rain, no wind, no clouds. It was joy to drive to Bergerac and then on to Lalinde because we could enjoy the air conditioning in the car! So cool, so wonderful. 

I wanted to buy fly repellent, skin lotion and anti-moustiques cream, plus a bottle of wine to replace the one we drank the first night we were here. The wine was the easiest thing to find in the Bergerac wine section because the bottle was on display, but I failed absolutely to find a Marie Rose mosquito repellent, though I did find what I think were lotions against head lice. Not quite what I wanted.

Then the fly spray; there was one here last year, so I know they exist but in the whole of Monsieur LeClerc’s fine supermarket I could not find a similar household spray. I came out with something called Stop Insects that promised to kill mosquitos, flying ants, cockroaches and the like. Then I went to look for the apres sun lotion. Again zilch. Sun tanning lotion everywhere, but no apres soleil in sight. I gave up and bought a tube of good old Nivea to stop my skin wrinkling up in all this heat.

At home with the dictionary I discovered the Stop Insect was not quite what I thought. It kills the creepy crawlers, but by spraying the curtains, window uprights, doors, tables, pool surrounds etc etc. Not sure what to do with it now.

On the wildlife front I found the desiccated corpse of a five inch lizard languishing in the bottom of an empty blue glazed planter. I wonder if I could fill these somehow, so that they are not death traps? Poor thing must have starved to death. At least I could turn them upside down.

Another problem is that the men who come and remove the dustbin bags have not appeared so far. We remember they came on Wednesday around 10.30, but something must have happened to the schedule, or else they’re not doing it in this heat. It really is extraordinary.

Goodbye Christmas, hello New Year

Christmas is over for another year, and we can all calm down and gather our strength for New Year. Our guests are leaving today, jetting off to Zermatt for some skiing, so the house will soon be calm and quiet again and I'll have to get to grips with catching up on household tasks. One thing we won't have to do is go shopping. It seems we overshopped by a mile and seriously over estimated how much we would eat. OTOH, we have drunk all the alcoholic supplies - surprise, surprise!

Thanks to the good weather, which has been so mild that honeysuckle is budding and gorse is flowering in sheltered spots, we've indulged in some bracing walks - Stocksfield woods,  Chopwell woods, the beach at Seaton Sluice, and our regular good old riverside walks. Our guests travelled as far afield as the creamery at Hawes in search of real Wensleydale cheese. Evidently they can't get it in Australia. Nor can they take any back as the regulations on food importation are very strict and quite rightly so. The UK has suffered from the import of so many species like the grey squirrel, mink and a particular kind of crayfish to name but three. Travellers brought back all sorts of things from abroad, and some were good like the glorious rhododendron  but then we suffer with Himalayan Balsalm crowding our hedgerows and riverbanks.

Very little writing or critiquing was done by moi in the last week, so I'll have to get back into the grind again. Not that it is a grind, really. I wouldn't do it if it were something I hated. Sometimes getting the words down or deciding which way to go next in the story is difficult, but I let it simmer about on the back burner for a while and it usually becomes clear which way I want to go, and the words start to flow.  I'm really behind with critiques for my writing colleagues, so perhaps that is what I shall start with this afternoon.

I haven't even seen Death comes to Pemberley yet!

Australian Butchers

Australia has let us down. We’ve had two, nearly three days of high winds and tonight the weather really went berserk and rained. Not the soft, pattering sort of rain we often get in Britain, but full on throw-it-down rain.

Yesterday I went for a walk along the beach where it wasn’t so bad; I still didn’t need a jacket. But the two viewing platforms overlooking the sea were something else – I hung on to the railing for fear I would be blown over the edge, and the wind was either bending my spectacles or threatening to tear them off my face depending which direction I turned my head. When I came home, the lenses were coated with sqalt spray so thick I could barely see. I hate to think what it would have done to my contacts.

Today, before the wind picked up in strength, which is usually does around ten or eleven o'clock, we got really brave – or mad, whichever you choose to think – and cycled over to Blackhead Village where there is a small clutch of shops and a rather nice library. Cycling wasn’t too bad going – I coped with all the uphill bits and loved the downhill bits and enjoyed the level bits. Even managed to navigate two parked cars and a roundabout! We bought lamb chops, pork chops, sausages and frozen prawns at the butcher's shop to see us through the week and paid a phenomenal price for it all.

But then, we don’t usually buy so much all at one time…and  would probably have paid a similar price in England. We’ve learned not to buy meat at Australian supermarkets because although it looks good, for some strange reason it doesn’t have a lot of taste. We tried chicken with a smoky barbecue sauce first, and looked at each other in puzzlement because we couldn’t taste chicken. Bacon is especially bland. We ate the lamb chops this evening, and they were good and tasty. Cycling back was tough because all the downhill burs turned into uphill buts - which I walked!

Retail therapy Ozzie style

Shopping in Woolworths in Forster this morning. The fascination with Australian products continues and vegetables continue to impress not only with their size and vigour but with the price! Contrary to when we came here four years ago, the exchange rate is not favourable to British visitors, but is very good indeed for Australians travelling to the UK. I have to remember that 1 Australian dollar is equal to about 63p in Sterling, and then guess the price of spring onions that are three times the size of the ones back home.

There’s a store called Bunnings here that is a dead-ringer for B & Q back home. It has the same senior citizen staff in red uniforms, and the layout of the aisles is exactly the same. Granted they have more bug zappers than we do, and a far greater selection of outdoor lights, barbies and pizza ovens, but hey! Otherwise, they’re siblings.

Great excitement watching whales cavorting in the bay this afternoon. Dick was having great fun and we watched him – opinions are divided as to whether he was one whale or two. One, says Helen.

Because today is my birthday we’re celebrating in fine style tonight. I opted for prawns – and here, wouldn’t you know it, they are giant prawns! David and Bill will barbecue them, and we’ve punnets of huge strawberries, Helen’s made a crème brûlée and Bill’s providing the Moet & Chandon. Yeeha!

(I intended to post this on Monday but unfortunately - or fortunately, whichever way you look at it, I got distracted by the prawns! Sorry!)

Green grass and Hexham

We're back to normal English winter weather.
The snow has just about gone, and the river
is no longer frozen but is running high and thick
and brown. The temperature is 4 degrees C,
damp and still. We went to Northacomb Farm Shop today, which sits high up on the ridge above the river. The snow was just starting to fall last week and the fields were still white from the previous dump. The pond was frozen, and everything glazed with frost.

Today, the snow has gone and the green fields are back on show. Not as bright and lush as they are in summer, but green nevertheless. Muddy and wet where the animals trudge about near gates and drinking troughs, and no doubt skiddy if you try and walk over them. In other fields, winter wheat is shooting, brave spears pale and green above the cold brown soil.

Its always reassuring to see the green when the snow melts. As if all is right with the world, somehow. One or two plants get frosted and die, but on the whole everything copes remarkably well with the cold and snow. Misty weather may not be particularly nice for being outdoors, but it makes for wonderfully atmospheric photographs. You cannot see Hexham in this shot below, but it is there, I assure you, lurking in the valley behind the two trees. We encountered a massive two lane traffic jam about half a mile from the roundabout into Hexham, and it took us an age to creep up the hill and turn down again towards the bridge over the Tyne and into Tesco beyond.
We thought the world had gone mad and couldn't wait to rush into the supermarkets to stock up because the shops would be closed for uh, maybe a whole day. As if, with freezers and fridges at our disposal, we cannot manage to last two days without new stocks. Anyway, we crawled down to the bridge where we found temporary traffic lights set up.
And all because two paving stones on the footpath had been lifted and removed. No workmen present, no explanation; red and white barriers around the area, managing to take up half of one lane of the road as well as the pavement, and therefore requiring only one lane across the bridge to be in use. No wonder there was a traffic jam. Hexham was in chaos, with half the town jammed solid and the other half like a ghost town.
We grumbled to ourselves in the car as we whizzed on into Tesco. Which lunatic in the town council had ordered the work to start at this precise time, and then allowed the workmen to leave the job half done while they disappeared home and put their feet up? Whoever s/he may be, may you too get stuck - not once, but several times - in your own creation.