I am Sailing...

On Friday 14th of March I was stepping onto the deck of the good ship Armorique ready to sail to Plymouth from Roscoff in Finisterre. But there were considerable stages to accomplish before this agreeable situation.
   As regular readers of the Ark must know, Kim ( Mrs Noah ) is currently located in Plymouth looking after our daughter Alyson, who had suffered an aneurism. We had decided that it would be pleasant for us both, for me to have a brief stay in Plymouth to keep her company and see how Al is recovering. Now it`s not easy to arrange to leave the Ark`s other passengers, even though Ian, our so patient neighbour agrees to feed the stay-on-board contingent. Storm, the grey kitten, is too young to leave, so is lodged at another kind friend`s house to be made a fuss of by Agnès and her daughter Eléa. Toffee usually stays with Jacqui and Adrian in Loubillé but they had to go to a funeral in the UK, so Toffee made his first trans-Manche trip, with Jilly and Laika.

  Normally, I leave home early enough to catch a 3pm sailing but Britanny Ferries had amended the sialing to 1pm, just too early to be feasible. We decided I should leave the day before and stay at the Formule 1 at St Brieuc.. As I made good time and checked in early after a five hour drive, , I decided to explore, and chose the Port of Le Légué, associated with St Brieuc. This proved to be further down a deep gorge that we traverse on our route north. The valley leads down towards the sea, which, however is out of sight. However, the little port has both commercial and pleasure boating facilities and a charming little town, too.
  After a brief stroll along the dockside I returned to the Formule 1 for an early night.
  Next morning, after eating as much as I could ingest of the unlimited breakfast, I headed off again for the two hour drive to Roscoff and the ferry port of Le Bloscon. I had arrived nice and early and found the terminal almost deserted, so took the opportunity of booking in the dogs in peace. They have to be taken into the terminal and scanned for their micro-chips, not easy with three dogs. I split them into two lots,  Jilly and Toffee first, then Laika, the more flighty, afterwards. No problems, I heaved a sigh of relief, and left the Brittany Ferries desk with my ticket duly authorised.
After a brief stroll with the dogs, I joined the queue of vehicles waiting to board and was checked in by the staff and customs and passed on to another queue. Brittany Ferries would never survive at Calais with a sailing every hour! Finally at last I could move off and dive down into the cavernous stern doors of the Armorique!
  The car is marshalled into a tight position with the other vehicle on the car deck, and I can then take my travel bag, give the dogs a biscuit and leave them to bark at the other motorists while we are whisked across the hundred miles or so of sea between Finisterre and Plymouth. Travel is so relaxing!
  Having left France in sunshine as you can see from my photos, it was lashing down in Plymouth, what a climate! Never mind I was able to spend a happy week with Kim and Alyson.

  Bye for now, going to continue to acclimatise to being back home again.

Beware the Perils of the International Internet!

Before you all send messages of sympathy, let me state that this photo is not of current conditions here but refers to a year ago. And just as displacement in time can mislead, so can spacial displacement. Let me explain what I mean.
   We have friends in several parts of the Globe, France of course, but also America and even Australia. Now if you rely on a report of Australian weather conditions, you could well be misled. People posting are equally close in appearance wherever they are located. As long as you know where your friends are based, this should not be a problem.
  However, such problems did arrive yesterday. Kim (Mrs Noah) reported from the UK, where she is looking after our daughter Alyson after an op,  that one of her friends posting from our local village had reported that she had had to delay her shopping trip because of a thick layer of snow on the ground. Kim was worried as to how I was getting on. I was rather surprised, because the village is only three kilometers away and I have no snow, or even frost in La Mort Limouzin. I had even driven through Loubillé earlier that morning. I thought perhaps this was an extremely local phenomenon and even jokingly  wondered whether someone was plucking a goose upwind....
   The apparent mystery was solved this morning. Kim said she had since discovered that our friend, though normally based in Loubillé, was staying in the UK, where her weather conditions were much different than if she had been at home! She had sent her message on a mobile or portable, of course.
  Good thing I wasn`t huddled by the fire, waiting for the snow to cover me too!

  Amusing, though!!

 Bye for now, just going to check the grass for snowfall!

Where, what snow??

The Fagin of the dog world

  Yes, here is her mug-shot,,,, now don`t let that innocent `stolen butter wouldn`t melt in my mouth` look fool you, this animal is a confirmed and relentless thief!
   I really thought that Jilly was the limit when it came to snapping up of unconsidered trifles. Jacqui would confirm that she has an (un)healthy appetite. She stole a whole plate of newly baked buns left out to cool, one time when Jax was kind enough to look after her. But Laika really takes the cake--or rather she would if you left it at a hight of less than ten feet from the ground. She is so agile with it , can leap onto the table or work surface in search of nourishment with absolute ease. What`s more she`s shameless and will do so while you`re in the room, I have never known a dog like it. Even Jilly has the tact or instinct of self preservation to wait til you`re out of sight.
  Why don`t you punish her, you ask? Well, of course we do, but five minutes later she will do the same again. And there`s a further complication about that--We think that in her past she has been severely hammered (mind you the previous owner could plead provocation!) If she thinks you are really going to hit her, she defends herself by bared teeth and a ferocious growl. She has never tried to bite, but I feel it is a possibility. She will accept a quick slap or tap but it doesn`t do to persist. She doesn`t like it if you show you`re cross with her and will look so miserable and penitent (ha! ) that she soon gets forgiven. She is a very affectionate dog, ideal in most other ways.
   What provoked this tirade? Well Kim bought a new waste bin with a hinged lid and a foot pedal, which she fondly hoped would be Laika-proof. No, she shoved her nose under the flap and took out the contents to scatter it over the kitchen.  Keep her out you say. Not very convenient and five minutes unsupervised is enough. Then she found it easier to turn the bin over. I attached it to the wall. We put a heavy log on top, bit unsightly but seemed to work--as long as you didn`t forget the log, no, not even for five minutes. I made a wooden latch operated by an aerolastic which worked for a day. Then she found the knack of working the elastic down the bin so the latch fell open. I wired the elastic to the latch. This worked for two weeks. But just as I was congratulating myself on being cleverer than a dog, she attacked the latch and tore it bodily apart! I have reverted to the log but how long til she starts to pull it off?  The saga continues....

Bye for now going to see what Laika is doing....

Wet or dry?

Today has been an odd sort of day. It`s supposed to be early March, still more or less winter, with a good fire making the wood-burner emit a cheery glow to keep the cold and damp at bay. But what do we have?  A warm, sunny day worthy of early summer, washing drying outside, doors open and the wood-burner neglected and threatening to go out.  I was seriously thinking of letting it do so, until it suddenly started to rain at six o`clock,and until I saw, on the local Météo that today`s temperatures of 16 or 17 degrees are expected to fall to 5 degrees on Monday. Crazy weather!
  Which do you prefer, wet or dry? Both have their points. If it`s wet, you have a good excuse to stay in and read a book. The grass and the garden will benefit, no struggle to carry heavy bidons of water to wilting plants. And a nice green lawn is surely preferable to the baked-brown look of my second pic. But wait, what about the gluey mud in the sheep-field that threatens to suck off your wellies, and the muddy footprints left by the cats on every surface... And it`s far more pleasant to walk the dogs in warm sunshine and go out into the cour without a forced change of footwear  No contest, really, the gardeners and farmers will have to put up with it, give me dry any time

  Bye for now, going to see if the dogs night-time walk is wet or dry.

Mystery of Constantine and his Horse

One of my favourite pieces of statuary is the equestrian statue shown above It can be seen over one of the doors of the great church of St Hilaire in the town of Melle in Deux Sèvres, Poitou Charentes. The statue, which is almost life-size, shows a figure on a horse. The horse`s front hoof is about to crush a recumbent figure in a long robe or dress. The rider is missing his right foot and stirrup, the horse`s right foreleg has also been broken off. I have read somewhere that French revolutionaries broke it off to `protect` the threatened person, whom they felt was a member of the proleteriat being oppressed by the nobility! However, these limestone statues are fragile and it may be just wear and tear.
  Nobody seems very sure what the scene portrays. Some sources suggest it represents the emperor Constantine crushing the Muslims, who were threatening Christendom at the time. Another theory states that it is the local Seigneur protecting the population, though if the prone figure is a woman, as it appears, `Protecting` appears the last thing he is doing! An intriguing enigma....

  Bye for now, going to prepare my tea, which MAY contain a more recent horse...

French as she is spoke--it`s a cow

    All us ex-pats will cheerfully acknowledge that it has not been easy to acquire our level of French language, however modest. You can imagine, then, my amusement this morning to see some native speakers in difficulty with their own language.
  I was watching TéléMatin on French TV this morning as I drank my first coffee of the day having first fed my menagerie of cats, dogs, sheep and tropical fish. This is a daily morning programme of news and snippets of interest presided over by William, a genial host of a `certain age` as the French say. Incidentally, this is a good way to improve your French and your knowledge of our adopted country. A young lady contributer was explaining how a fashion house had devised a way of re-cycling des baches publicitaires, those large plastic sheets or tarpaulins, printed with huge publicity photos, that you see lashed to, or breaking loose from buildings. They were cutting them up for  fashionable shopping bags, she explained. William seemed amazed at this revelation, as well he might be, as it turned out that he had misheard the raw material as vaches publicitaires!  He must have had in mind those lovely cows depicted producing creamy milk for cheese or yoghurt, or even the purple cow in the Milka chocolate ad, though this is, I am sure, a computer construct. His hesitant and slightly shocked suggestion of Biftec haché, or mince, alerted the contributer to a crossed line, and she corrected him crossly, Non,non, pas vaches, baches avec un `B` comme en biberon!  I do hope his air of bonhommie is not assumed or I am sure she would have been taken to task after the cameras had moved elsewhere!  Funny, though...
  Bye for now, going to walk the dogs.

Hunter- Killer..Well, one out of two isn`t bad.

Have just been walking the dogs up the field track adjacent to the Bois Cambert. At this time of year, this is a bare earth field, with a thick fringe of grass along the edge of the track. Now Jilly and Laika love to try to dig out (and eat) the little field mice or voles that have their burrows in the grass. However, the little beasts are very cunning and mostly seem to avoid the combined hunting skills of the two dogs with an almost contemptuous ease!
  This afternoon was a typical train of events. Jilly located a burrow, which she could smell contained a mouse. First shoving her nose down it to check direction, she started to dig furiously. Laika, seeing that the hunt was on, joined in, digging a couple of feet away to try to cut off the prey`s retreat. The mouse, choosing its moment, emerged unseen from between Jilly`s hind feet and ran out into the field. Quickly checking that both dogs had their noses underground, it ran with twinkling feet around the two dogs at a distance of four or five feet, in a curve to re-join the verge. Locating a new burrow, it disappeared into its refuge. Jilly had dug so enthusistically that she had struck the water table and was blowing bubbles. Did she think the mouse was aquatic? Eventually, I had to blow the `gone away` on the hunt and urge them back towards the car,  Jilly with mud to the eye-brows. She should be ashamed of herself, a great dog like that out-thought by a tiny mouse!
   Bye for now, going to hose Jilly down with the spray nozzle before she can come in!