Arriving somewhere, but not here

Scene: The Brockweir Inn in the Wye Valley - 

I sat in the bar, slack-jawed. 

Opposite me, Baz, a long lost friend from school. We last met in ’72. Over 40 years had passed and we had been reunited for a little over 2 hours.

He had asked me the usual “Where have you been all my life?” question, always a mistake. I had compacted, edited, censored and otherwise strangled my life’s history into two hours of … rises, falls and a series of unfortunate events. He was even daft enough to ask questions.

Once done and dusted, I relaxed into listening mode ready to hear a similar tale and looking forward to imbibing enough real ale to numb the senses.

“Well, let’s see.” He started, “I left school, went straight into teaching college where I met my future wife. We married, had two wonderful daughters and now we have retired into a life of gentle bliss”. (I added the last bit just to introduce some excitement.)

(Faces have been changed to protect the innocent…)

That was it. The perfect life, from my somewhat chagrined point of view.

Not even enough of a story to justify more than a sip of ale.

At that moment I saw the unfairness of life, thus my slack jaw (and lack of inebriation).

I cannot answer which is better, a constantly contented life or one full of highs and lows. We make what we can of it. We must take what we are given. We don’t however, have to philosophise all the bloody time.

Well, that was a year ago, the highs and lows continue. The phrase ‘nothing changes’ seems somewhat inadequate.

And so, having seen my youngest fly the nest, join the mum’s club and get married, we have decided the house is a bit too large and are soon to start doing up an old farm (actually, and slightly scarily appropriately, a wine storehouse - ‘chai’ in french, which also means ‘bottle’ in Thai … )

I’ve searched out photos of the farm from when it was built many centuries ago. I found this old transparency:

It seems that we have a hankering after old things, houses with character, with history.

I discovered, for instance, that several impressionist painters had been there:

… and was, in fact, the site of the famous ‘Cherry trees’ painting by Van Gogh:

Inevitably, despite our best laid plans, the new place will end up larger than the old place, but at least I’ll be able to walk around the snooker table without banging my head, elbows and knees nor having to use half sized cues. 

The more acute amongst you may have noticed the television in the lounge, unusual in impressionist paintings. So would the two cars and electric cable have been with Van Gogh if I hadn’t judiciously removed them…

Meantime, Annick’s dad has been going through his ups and downs. Four days ago; certain death and long faces, two days later, chatting to all and sundry whilst pointing out that he is not actually dying, so what are we going on about?

Where and when he is going to arrive, I’ve no idea. He wants to cling on to life no matter what. A life spent horizontal, without eating or drinking. Maybe not life as we know it…

Anyway, back to the great Philosophers with their lyrics to the song that won the Top award in ‘Greatest Songs Ever on Planet Earth’ competition: 

All my designs, simplified
And all of my plans, compromised
All of my dreams, sacrificed

Arriving somewhere, but not here.

(Porcupine Tree 2005)

Photos of Montauban

Link: Photos of Montauban

I’ve finally added some photos of our home town to my photo web-site. 

Nice place to live…

http://www.philhyde.photos/375583/6218037/france/montauban

Typically French

Stop car. Stand in middle of road. Take photo. Dodge traffic.

Photography is scary.

Bottoms

This is rapidly becoming one of the worlds most popular words in the English language, although how it translates into other languages may not be so amusing. I know that it is popular here because I hear myself saying it quite a lot. Well, someone has to listen to me don’t they?

Looking back through my wildlife photography, it dawned on me that maybe I have a thing about bottoms.

It also reminded me that I have spent a very significant amount of time with my arm up bottoms of various descriptions. Mostly cattle, but loads of horses and even buffalo and zebra.

Kinda wierd looking back at it (pun intended).

It has certainly produced a few worried expressions…

Psychoanalysis has shown me that the roots of my problem go back to university. The then professor of anatomy, whom incidentally was as anal retentive as they come, was giving us an introduction to rectal palpation. This was one of the few times that I saw him animated. In fact, it was one of the few times that I saw him at all, as his lectures were reknowned the world over for their interminable boredom and, more importantly, their factual inaccuracy.

Fumbling around in the dark as you might say.

Despite this complete lack of signs of intelligence, and his absence of any trace of a sense of humour, he did say one thing that will forever remain in my somewhat turbid mind.

Whilst standing behind a cow brought into the lecture theatre incase none of us had seen one before, he lifted its tail and pointed at the tightly constricted orrifice saying “rectal palpation; it’s a whole new world in there…” (Foriegn readers should know that for ‘whole’ we heard 'hole’.)

His bemused expression as we rolled around the floor holding our stomachs was one to behold.

I went on to visit the good old United States of America as a student, where I shoved my arm up something like a hundred plus cow’s bottoms a day. Not many people can say that…

Inevitably, my life headed towards that specific memorable moment that we all have had in our youth. Conversation in a house full of students will always tend towards toilet humour. Add into this mix the fact that the students were veterinary and medical, the toilet humour tended to have a rectal bent. on regaling the medical students with tales of arm thrusting humour, one particular female medic enquired how we dealt with the smaller members of our patient list, before coming out with the immortal line “There’s no way you’re getting your hand in my pussy…”

Speechless.

All this childhood abuse has had deviant effects on my photography.

That and the fact that wildlife knows just how to deal with photographers…

I think I’ve probably gone as far as I can with this blog. I hope I haven’t put anyone off their lunch.

Phil

128 days and counting ... er ... coughing

Why do they call it the 100-day cough if it’s gonna last (so far) more than 128 days!? It must have been named by the same publicists who named the 100-year war. Which, incidentally, still technically hasn’t ended…

This bleeding cough is driving me nuts, sending me ga-ga, although no one appears to have noticed. There’s me struggling to breathe, and all people can think of is, well, someone else.

Take my youngest little boy for instance. 30 years old? Big deal, I’ll be there soon. (Well, 30 years coughing maybe.)

Cute isn’t he? Er … wasn’t he…

Then there’s my youngest daughter, due to sprog in about four months. Everyone’s clucking around her excited that she’s to have a baby hormonal time-bomb (aka baby girl). No one seems to care that my ducks are busy laying eggs…

My father-in-law is still fading away in hospital (even I draw the line at making light of this) which leaves my mother-in-law (I sense a ‘humour opportunity’ coming) living with us, clucking around me whilst gently mocking my cooking skills. If nothing else it is helping me practice my Peter Sellers french accent.

There is certainly a lot of clucking going on. And coughing.

In a vain attempt at lifting spirits I tried turning once more to rugby.

Despite Montauban doing well, England have gone and spoilt it all by narrowly missing out on the six-nations cup. Made worse by my continuing failure to grasp some of the more basic French vocabulary, thinking ‘Samedi’ meant ‘Sunday’ thus missing the bloody match altogether.

So how about some respite in the Pyrénées?

Beautiful but (there’s always a but) this was the last opportunity to ski as the resort is closing today, despite there being shit-loads of snow. Added to which, because we are, ahem, responsible adults, our stay was restricted to only one day so that we could spend time trying to get comfortable sitting on a hospital floor.

Now there’s something not quite right about hospitals. The general idea, I had reasoned, was that you go into hospital because you are unwell and require aid to get back to one’s normal state. This seems perfectly logical to me. Hey! I run a couple of animal hospitals, I know about these things!

So why does someone like my ‘papa’ get admitted because of having pretty much end-stage aspiration pneumonia, and get pretty much ignored for a couple of weeks (quote: “don’t bother pressing the alarm button in the night because we won’t come to you anyway”) until they realise that the bacteria that they have incompetently given him to add to his woes (in his case both C. difficile and MRSA!) are potentially hazardous to other inpatients (and staff, and visitors) thus then throwing the medical book at him, plus, just to make him feel really on top of the world, shove him into isolation where the only way to visit him is to wear fancy dress! That includes masks that we’ve taken to writting our names on so that he can tell who we are…

Well, there is a life outside hospital (although clearly not a great deal inside it) and to cheer us up a little, it looks as though the farm purchase is going to happen (long live the strong pound). This place is just down the road…

So, having got all that off my chest, I’ll bid you farewell as the sun settles behind the mountains of the Vallée de Ger.

Well, I’d like to, but we’re still in Montauban where it’s bloody pissing down…

A bientôt

Phil

Pax Vobiscum

Well, Sophie’s gone and done it. She’s tied the knot. Got hitched. Got spliced. Joined together, and other such phrases that’ll confuse the hell out of google translate…

Yup, my youngest girl… who’d have thought?



She and Ulrich left their flat this morning as free people…



… to get PACSed.

A PACS is, well, um, it’s sort of means going in to a room separately, and coming out together. With a piece of paper. A contract.



It takes a couple of minutes and that’s that.

Thankfully the hoards were waiting…



…then off we trundled to the, er, reception in a local coffee house..



…before making our way through the cloisters of Place National…



…to dinner, where we had the traditional blowing up the cake ceremony…



…then the traditional eating the cake ceremony…



…before the happy couple went off to see ISIS…



(Isis is their dog by the way, named after the Egyptian Goddess, not, well, you know…)

…before finally riding off into the sunset…



… and they lived happily ever after…

Pax vobiscum - peace be with you.

Bittersweet

And so… 20 years of being hitched to my beloved have passed us by. The traditional gift to give on this great occasion is usually china. Having decided against buying each other an entire continent, we settled on the obvious; a farm and parents…

This may appear confusing to some, but please bear with me…

The year started with us, as usual, in the Pyrénées. We love this corner of France and try to see as much of it as we can. This has proven a little difficult of late due in part to my ‘100-day cough’. Now on day 110 and feeling somewhat unhealthy, we decided to buy an electric wheelchair:

This is Lady Muck awaiting her chauffeur.

Well, it certainly gets us to places previously impenetrable to my war-torn body.



We love our little cabin in the forest soooooo much. It may be creaky and old, but for some reason that makes me feel at home. Because of this we got to thinking of our house in Montauban and decided to look around for something with more character.

We’ve found a little farm in Lamothe Capdeville, just north of Montauban. Houses in France are ridiculously cheap at the moment. If the sale goes through, we will set about renovating it with a view to moving in permanently.



This explains the 'farm’ bit of the traditional gift exchange, but what about the 'parents’ bit? Well, sadly Annick’s mum and dad are not doing too well, and have moved in with us. The word 'temporaire’ gets used a lot; I think it means 'Don’t ask’. Papa has since moved on to hospital, where things do not look too good.

I then spent a couple of days in Wales catching up with the kiddos and with work (yes indeed, I am still technically a vet, and have finally been given the dubious honour of using the title 'Doctor’). I thought I’d take some pictures of another crumbling ruin (more here).



Which brings us to today, the 9th March. As we pass by our 20 year mark, Sophie starts into hers as, today at 10am, she enters into a PACS (a French contractual version of marriage) with her one true love, Ulrich. I’ll post some photos later I hope.



How times change. This was us 20 years ago…



My parents gone, and Papa feeble, failing but fighting.

Bittersweet.

 

Dr Phil