stories and lentils

It feels very fitting to declutter in Springtime. Cleansing after the winter. The time of year when we shift from our 'inside' lives to the outdoors and it comes naturally to play more at floating celandine flowers in puddles, stirring them with sticks and filling buckets with mud than anything else. Since Linny was born I feel as if I've waged a battle against her toys ; the toys other people buy for her, the toys we have bought for her, the toys she has inherited that used to belong to Florent or I, the toys we have found, generously placed on garden walls to give away... There are a number of reasons for this battle ; I don't think children need a lot of toys. I think having mountains of things can be overwhelming for them and I think too many toys can begin to restrict their imagination. I hate unexpectedly standing on small pieces of plastic. I don't want to spend unneccessary amounts of time picking up toys and tidying them away an...

It's only with the prospect of leaving looming over me that I have come to realise how rooted I feel here. How the familiarity of where I live is my home. All my life I have sought adventure and now instead of it beckoning and pulling me towards it there is something that yearns for my feet to remain planted on the ground, on the floor of our house and the pavements of the streets I walk every day. My babies were born in the hospital on the hill which I can see from here and their lives lived out here so far and so too my life as a mother. An identity that seems to have consumed me over the past three years. As is perhaps often the case when we make 'big' decisions in life there is an initial excitment and giddiness at the prospect of what will be new and then start all the mundane considerations which allow time for doubts to creep in. My shyness of this adventure has surprised me. Moving to France is hardly the most adventurous move we could be making. Renova...

These pictures are of the little terraced house we are buying. As there was no electricity connected when we visited the other photos are of dusty black rooms, the only light from holes in walls or the roof illuminating precarious looking floor boards so I'll leave those ones out...   We are both very excited about bringing life back here, at once overwhelmed by the challenge and looking forward to the satisfaction of slowly making it a home again.

  I asked Florent for his advice when devising a title for the blog and asked what words came to his mind when he thought about our imminent move to the Pyrenees. 'Lentils' was one of the first he volunteered. Because we'll be eating a lot of them. In fact we already do. The staple in any economical largely vegetarian diet. I thought 'stories'. Whatever happens we'll have stories. Stories for us to tell, stories that will make up the patchwork of experiences we will provide for our daughters. They may recount them later in their lives, tales not remembered but part of their imagination, part of the collective family history, everyone's version slightly different. The more I thought about these two words, 'story' and 'lentil' the more they seemed to fit what we are seeking : A simple, soulful and humble adventure. Those things said, however, I don't doubt that I'll quickly tire of lentils.