stories and lentils

These are perfect Autumnal days, beginning close to freezing and ending with warm afternoons where a heavenly light bathes everything in a warm yellow. The afternoon sun illuminates the hillsides where goats graze to the melodic ringing of their bells and poplars stretch up like brush strokes of a golden tumeric. There are moments when the light is so perfect that the scene before me appears so fragile that if I reached out into it all it might crumble to a fine dust. Moments where the girls look up to the sky, delighted by aeroplane trails or peer down to the ground to examine an acorn in their path. This ephereal light catches in their hair or eyelashes, casts shadows across half of their faces or dances in the leaves in the trees behind them.   We carved two small pumpkins for Halloween and then, as a necessary sacrifice for our frugality, cooked them the next day in a soup. I suspect this will be a trauma that Little L rebukes us for in later life. How she had t...

The beginning of October; chestnuts, figs, crisp mornings and evenings drawing in ever earlier. We are relishing wrapping up under more and more layers as we make the most of the clear skies before winter arrives. Autumn here is also the time when animals are walked back down from high grazing in the mountains to lower, more hospitable, ground for the winter. These 'Transhumances' are often accompanied by 'fêtes' and communal meals as the village traditionally welcomes back the shepherds and the herdsmen. We watched a flock of sheep arrive back in a nearby village with the community out to welcome them home. It was quite moving to think that in the past these farmers may have had no contact with their families and neighbours for those summer months spent caring for their flocks and this welcome home was a real reunion.   My sister came to visit and we had a special weekend of adventure with her: Vulture spotting in Bugarach (the mountain destin...

We've lived here for three months (and half of that was in a tent in some woodland out of the village) so I know rationally that it is fine not to have made friends yet. I know that just because I have not made friends so far, that it doesn't mean I will never make friends here. However, who considers these things rationally when they are missing their friends from home and life as a family of four needs some serious fresh air ? I am prone to emotional responses to most things in life, it's what led me sob whilst listening Nadya Hussein on Desert Island Discs a few weeks ago, as if I had forever forfeited the opportunity to bake cakes or reminisce about the Backstreet Boys with friends simply by moving to France. It was perhaps also the repetitive task of chipping plaster off a beam combined with a lunch of tinned mackerel that led to the emotional outburst but the bottom line is, if there's an opportunity for teary melodrama, I generally take it. When we first ...

Finally the incredibly long lasting green of the countryside has succumbed to the burning of the hot sun. Leaves have begun to fall from the plane trees lining the village's streets and the woodlands around are beginning to patchwork browns and yellows. It feels as if summer is mellowing and Autumn is around the corner. With Autumn comes the start of school and a new adventure for Little L. Navigating a foreign education system is a challenge to me. I want to be informed and informing myself of the differences and nuances between what to expect in the UK and here in France is difficult. It seems I might have to learn as we go along, not something that fills me with much enthusiasm as I wave goodbye to Little L at the school gates for the first time, hoping that it will all be OK  . It seems opinions are divided about the education system here. Generally people familiar with both highlight the disciplined and perhaps 'old fashioned' approach here in France ...