Gnome-Trek: Episode 7. Into the Plague: Chapter 2

 Europe, the Final Frontier. 

These are the voyages of the Flying-Brick ‘Gnome’. Its continuing mission: to explore our world, to seek out my kids and to hug them, to boldly go where no gnome has gone before...

Chapter 2. Home.

My mission: To leave...

It's not like I don't appreciate what I've got. As prisons go it's up there with the best, it's just that, now and again, we'd like to get away. It's just that, now and again, we'd like to see our kids. Talk to our kids. Hug our kids. That's not much to ask is it? Well. Yeah. I guess it is.

It has been nearly a year since seeing my youngest son, such a long time since a normal family life has been possible. 

Like I say, I know we're privileged to live here. We forget how life was for our ancestors, how much more difficult life was just a few decades ago. Take this place for instance...

Cute isn't it? This is just above us on top of the hill, close to our garden. I pass it most days while walking the hound. The bit on the left is a shed, to the right is a collapsed stable. That little bit in the middle? That was home for the current owner's grandparents. It consisted of two rooms. A kitchen and a bedroom. The grandparents slept on the damp soil floor of the kitchen, their daughter slept in the tiny bedroom. 

Their diet was mostly potatoes and eggs. Three hectares made for scant provisions.

Ah, yes, also the 'top of the range' bathroom...

This was normal life just two or three generations ago. 

And I worry when the internet goes down...

So instead of relishing the fact that today's standards are so much better, we planned to live in something even smaller for the next couple of weeks. 

Colour us 'special needs'...

So yes, I do appreciate what I've got. But I want more. I want... no... I need to see my kids. It's a primordial thing ok? It's written into our genetic code. I am powerless before its encoded force. The force is with us... 

We see our daughter in Montauban with her two sproggs every now and again, between snotty noses, phlegmatic coughs, sleep deprivation etc. And for that I'm grateful. But the other three plus the grandkids? 

We needed a plan. 

A cunning plan. 

A cunning plan that might even take us to the dark side...

We would go over to the UK (aka 'the dark side') by Gnome, via the Eurotunnel. This way we would have no contact with smelly human beings, minimising our risk of catching this bloody plague, minimising the risk of infecting maman on our return. Simple. 

Er. No.

Our first attempt failed. What a surprise. This was planned for May, before the seriousness of the pandemic was fully realised by those in power. France locked down. Travel was banned. Our Eurotunnel tickets became useless as they disappeared into the vacuum of their cyberspace. I finally extracted credit from them, but when could that be used? Time ground by...

Despite respite, despite life returning to a different normal during the summer, it was clear that winter would bring with it another surge, another wave. If we were to see the kids we needed to move now. 

First, we needed someone to look after the house, the animals, and, most of all, maman, for that period. Not an easy ask nor an easy task. Annick's sister bravely volunteered, but she and her other (Better? Lesser? No comment...) half had to come from Paris, a region rapidly growing in invasive viral particles. Would they be caught in lock down? At the same time, lock-downs were happening in the UK, notably in Wales. Would we arrive to find no-one there? Was it even worth trying? Yes. My eldest needed to come back with us to France for much needed succour. 

All he needed to do was escape Cardiff...

This whole plan was a giant jigsaw made up of multiple interconnecting but changing pieces. For this plan, this jigsaw, to work required all pieces to fall together at the same time.  

Little did we know that the jigsaw was soon to fragment into even more deranged parts. 

This was like spinning plates.

Next, Chapter 3: The first leg.

Gnome-Trek: Episode 7. Into the Plague: Chapter 1

Europe, the Final Frontier. 

These are the voyages of the Flying-Brick ‘Gnome’. Its continuing mission: to explore our world, to seek out my kids and to hug them, to boldly go where no gnome has gone before...

Chapter 1. We are where we are.

My mission: a Blog-a-day.

If you've come here to escape the viral madness, then you will be sorely disappointed. This virus has invaded every part of our lives and thus also insinuated itself into every part of this story.

We, in France, are once again in lockdown. 

Once again I will attempt to post something every day, be it a photo, some words of wisdom, or a combination of the two. I'll try, but will probably fail on the wisdom bit...

Last time, now far into the distant past, I posted each day a photo of some random flower, insect, garden scene. After calls from you all to be silent, to desist, to shuffle off, and the occasional "Aarrgggghhhh!" I've decided to change my approach. 

This is to be the story of our last trip in the Gnome, an adventure full of the complete gamut of emotions, of highs and of the deepest of lows.

Our voyage there and back again...

We are were we are, and we are here...

A distant fog submerges Montauban. A fog that stifles, that engulfs. It is a fog of facts and of fake news, a fog of information and of disinformation, a fog of danger with no safe place. At its heart is Covid. How do we calculate our route through all of this thick soup of fact and fiction? 

There is no simple solution, there is no path to take that will be one hundred percent safe. All we do has risk and consequences, but how do we balance that against survival, against love, against a normal life, against living long enough to sup another glass of wine? 

There is no more a 'normal' life. Thankfully there remain several sups of wine...

And so these were the questions we asked of ourselves whilst planning our odyssey into the plague.

Do we go or do we stay? How do we get there? How do we get back? How do we calculate the risks when the risks are constantly changing? How do we protect those that we are holden to shelter from harm? How many bottles of wine do we take?

When we originally planned this trip, this adventure, this odyssey, there was no doubt. It had been many months since seeing our close family in the UK. Too many months due to this pestilence. All we had to do was go there, visit each house which were each self isolating, share our love, then bugger off back to France. 

Simple.

And yet, simple was the last thing that it turned out to be; simple it was not. Nothing went according to plan. This was a voyage into chaos, an adventure full of unforeseen risk and was fraught from the very start.

This is our story...

Tomorrow: Chapter 2, the surprising sequel to Chapter 1...

Exciting isn't it?

Gnome Trek. Episode 6: Sky and the Trail of Death.

France, the Final Frontier. 

These are the voyages of the Flying-Brick ‘Gnome’. Its continuing mission: to explore our world, to seek out new life and shoot them, to boldly go where no gnome has gone before...

Episode 6: Sky and the Trail of Death.

Our mission: To boldly go uphill quite a lot...

Fear not! This is not the face of Death. This is just Sky, hunter of small furry animals, seeker of fetid filth, devourer of unpleasant excrement, man’s best friend.

It all started here:

We had returned from Sky's adventure in the snow the previous evening. The sounds of the valley were haunting. The stags were rutting and their groaning roars bounced and echoed hauntingly off the valley walls. 

The sounds elicited tingling waves up my spine. This time of year in the Pyrenees is unique in its mysticism.

For the Gnome, this was a day of rest. For the rest of us, it would be a tad more difficult...

The path forever upwards turned out to be somewhat energy-sucking, who'd 'ave thunk?

After half an hour of risking cardiac failure and respiratory collapse, we arrived at a large open space. My heart was racing, my lungs bursting and my spider senses tingling...

Sky's nasal passages were tingling too. There was an eerily distant smell. An obscure odour. 

It was the bittersweet scent of death....

[OK, here we, the editors of this blog, have had to intervene. Here were meant to be multiple photos of corpses. As we consider this to be even more distasteful than the usual crap that this so-called photoblogger normally puts out, we have substituted a photo of a dead tree...]

We often walk in the pyrenees, we occasionally see dead animals, especially in spring when the half starved deer attempt to give birth, and fail. But this was different. These were shepherded animals, cared for by man. Or, in this case, not so much.

We saw eight dead sheep scattered next to the trail. They were long dead. Only one had a multitude of insect life in attendance. The others were bone and leather, even Sky was not that interested and preferred continuing her mole hunt.

We carried on up the steep slope, hoping to distance ourselves from the smell without allowing our circulatory system to throw in the towel. 

Once clear of the pong, we  began to wonder what exactly was causing this ovine genocide. Could it be the multiple fungal fruiting bodies that were springing up around us?

Nope. As I said, these sheep were long dead. Something killed them months ago. Bear? Wolf? Mint sauce? 

We continued onwards and upwards...

After nearly three long hours of almost vertical slog, kludging through mud, scrambling over felled trees, fighting off random trolls, smiting evil wizards, we eventually arrived at the summit. 

And there we found a possible cause of the mass killing...

Dark magic.

Here we found a ring of sepulchral stones.  Their aura smote our internal energy balance, our chi was quelled by their quantum resonance. 

This must surely be the cause of the massacre below.

Bollocks. 

It was a ring of bleeding' stones for christ sake!

Sky, looking on with her bemused expression, knew the truth.

These sheep died because walking up these sodding mountains was bloody murder!
___

Next: Journey into the Plague...

Gnome Trek. Episode 5: Of Snow and Sky.

France, the Final Frontier. 

These are the voyages of the Flying Brick ‘Gnome’. Its continuing mission: to explore our world, to seek out new life and new restaurants, to boldly go where no gnome has gone before...

Episode 5: Of Snow and Sky

Our mission: to seek and destroy remnants of a strange substance found lurking in the upper reaches of the Pyrenees. 

Our weapon: Sky - hunter of small furry animals, seeker of fetid filth, devourer of unpleasant  excrement, man’s best friend.

The week had started damply, with wall to wall 'mountain drizzle', so named due to it being drizzle and, well, found in the mountains, as opposed to that other kind called ‘Welsh drizzle’. 

Two damp days later and the Gnome was ready for action. 

And so to the next morning...

A clear sky

Gnome stood proud in a kind of brick-like fashion, ready to spew forth its secret weapon; Sky. 

Sky leaped forward eagerly that fine morning, ready for her first job. After this delightful deposit, she regained her usual level of eagerness, hovering somewhere between procrastination and prostration. For now, she was erring towards the eager end of the spectrum, but there was to be a steep climb and thus a keen test of her ability to avoid prostration. Her previous effort had left her almost crippled, but a couple of weeks of intensive training has seen an immense improvement. She could now get up without aid, as long as food is involved...

We set off uphill on the trail of some snow, and what easier trail to follow than a ski lift...

Sky is adept at searching out wild timorous beasties, and was intent on hunting down every last mole by digging them out.

Yes, Sky was turning a mountain into a molehill.

She climbed directly towards the peak. Well, directly in the doggy sense of the word, including, as it does, multiple diversions for sniffing out beasties and poopies, with scant regard for mother natures more colourful bits...

Then the mountain stirred. It had become aware of intruders. It was conscious of interlopers, and it prepared to launch its defences. Firstly, it did that usual thing that mountains do with gravity causing the body's weight to rapidly increase its drag. Then it thinned the air, as mountains do, making respiration more rapid. All this is standard mountain fare, designed to deter the decrepit. But this mountain had another trick, a special defence...

An ominous hissing sound reached our ears. As this screeching peaked, the mountain belched forth violent jets of red hot lava, with added sparkly bits.

Ok, not lava. Technical hitch. Wrong kind of software.

Sky skilfully avoided these jets, which was a little odd as she is normally attracted to wet stuff. I think that maybe she prefers the dirty brown kind. 

The mountain's peak was now in sight, in fact we nearly tripped over it...

And then Sky spotted her goal. Snow. 

And for Sky snow means.... 

brain-seizure.

One of Sky's slaves decided to help out. The camera man was much amused...

After much happy frolicking about, there was little left of the white(ish) fluffy(ish) stuff, and thus Sky's mission was fulfilled. 

By now the jets were quiescent, so the decent was started.

The jets restarted.

Once I find out who did that....

And so Sky's day had come to a close, giving her the opportunity to fall prostrate and spend much needed time attempting to digest the day's intake of poops. 

Meanwhile her slaves filled their stomachs with something slightly more appetising...

Sky was content. Knackered, but content. 

Sky - hunter of small furry animals, seeker of fetid filth, devourer of unpleasant excrement, man’s best friend.

Sky of the Gnome.

Go Sky!

—

Next: Sky and the Trail of Death...