Lost Time is Never Found Again.

Fourteen years ago we stumbled upon a shard of paradise, fallen to earth deep in the pyrenees. 

We instantly fell in love with the place, and it repaid us by providing us with a haven, whilst sucking my wallet dry. Worth (nearly) every penny.

However, changes crept upon us. The climate slowly (but not slowly enough) warmed, reducing winter's snow. Age reduced our ability to hide the painful cries resulting from every fall. Each and every tumble left its mark. 

Meanwhile our other responsibilities tied us more and more to our main abode, keeping us from our mountain retreat. Time's they were a'changin'. It was time to sell. Our Hydeaway, much valued and much financially draining, had to go. 

Onto the market it went. Bureaucracy knew no bounds. As much as I love France, I do occasionally wish its white collar workers could find alternative employment. Calling Mr Musk.

However, back in the real world (you know, the one Trump is trying to destroy), our caring responsibilities approached the point of overwhelming us. On gradually realising that we needed to recover our personal life, another hard decision had to be made, one that filled us both with guilt. 

All happened with surprising speed. The normal French version of 'mañana' was left behind us in our backdraft. Before we knew it, we were driving north with maman riding shotgun. Six hours of motorway driving interspersed with multiple prolonged toilet stops with the aid of our in-house wc, ending up at a nursing home near Paris. Very near many of our family. 

It's near Crécy-la-Chapelle if any of you wish to visit.

Watch out for flooding...

After initial adjustment, she appears happy. We are still racked with guilt.

Despite that guilt, in fact because of it, we intend making best use of our new time, and boring your pants off by keeping you informed.

For instance, on St Valentines day, instead of having a romantic meal in a hyper-expensive restaurant packed with heaving bodies, we sped off to Cordes-sur-ciel for a romantic yoghurt in the camper-van. No mention of heaving bodies...

A room with a view.

The view as mentioned above.

A typical street in Cordes.

Typical creatures found in Cordes.

Another typical creature.

And yet another.

Then, within days, Luke arrived with his entourage, and after a couple of days frolicking around the pool, and doing the French gourmand thing...

Chez Ernest, our favourite resto in Montauban.

...we all set off to the Pyrenees, visiting, of course, our favourite resto in the mountains.

La Soulan

Now please sit back and relax as, instead of boring you stiff with a load of photos of our stay in the mountains, I've chucked them all together in a glorious video:

It was a great week, reminding us of how much we love the place, as do our kids and their offspring.

So this got me thinking...

This is me, thinking...

We have taken the house off the market.

Result.

And to prove we're not losing any more time, we spent the last night of the month stargazing for lined-up planets close to Saint Cirq Lapopie. 

 Our van was close to it, not the planets themselves...

This thing all things devours,

Birds, beasts, trees, and flowers.

Gnaws iron, bites steel,

Grinds hard stones to meal,

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats high mountain down.

Gollum

Happy 'Cause I'm Home

You may well be under the impression from watching the previous two videos, that all this chat about us heading off on our much-missed Gnome-Treks may mean that all we want to do is bugger off into the unknown.

Well, you'd be wrong. 

We love this humble abode of ours and many of you have asked; "Just how is that garden of yours looking?" Well, maybe not exactly many of you, but someone did hint that maybe I should shut up about the Pyrenees and show more about our little corner of paradise. 

After having a couple of difficult Springs where late frosts started the decimation of my much cherished garden (a decimation that was completed by a scorching summer without rain) we have had a most welcome season of perfect growing conditions. Loved by all my plants, especially the weeds. I await the coming summer with a certain amount of dread, and am spending much time tweaking the watering system and talking nicely to our water well.

So here is our garden now, put all together in a video for your pleasure:

Don't be surprised if the next garden video is of a desert wasteland...

It's Been a While

 A Hopefully Happy New Year to you All...

Hmm... Maybe not the greatest year ever? Oh well, there's nothing left to do but leave you with this...

plus a few Christmas memories...

 

 I hope that you have a good one... 

 Phil & Annick.

Noël 2021 Blog de 'pas beaucoup de nouvelles'.

English version here

Oui, nous sommes toujours de ce monde, notre sanité ne tenant qu’à un fil par moments pour ne pas perdre la raison, lol.

Ceci en est le cas pour beaucoup d’entre nous je pense !

Cette année, comme beaucoup l’auront remarqué, a été une année très marquante. 

Il y a certainement eu des moments plus que déroutants ces derniers 12 mois mais il y a tout de même eu de bons moments et même de très bons.

Entre ces deux extrêmes la vie a suivi son cours bien que nous faisant nous sentir plus isolés que par le passé. Certes cela nous permet d’apprécier d’autant plus notre chance de vivre dans ce petit coin de paradis.

Bref, ce blog comporte 4 vidéos; une joyeuse, une magique représentant mes occupations, (ma ‘nouvelle vie’), une originale, et finalement une nostalgique et triste.

La joyeuse comme d’habitude inclus famille et amis tout comme la dernière, celle qui est nostalgique voir très triste.

Alors commençons par la joyeuse, une vidéo de la petite tribu Hyde tous ensemble.

La deuxième partageant avec vous notre petit coin de paradis où je passe la grande majorité de mon temps.

La troisième, petit interlude pour vous donner un zeste de joie car pour la dernière mieux de sortir vos mouchoirs :(

Pour commencer, les bons et supers bons moments :

"Retrouvailles"

 

J’espère que ça vous a donné chaud au cœur tout autant que moi.

Pas le temps de chômer dans la vie ! La marche et le jardinage sont ma meilleure façon de me ressourcer et pour me sentir en paix.

« Emmène moi dans cet endroit fantastique, apaise mes soucis, chagrins »

Le jardin, ma vie ....

"Notre Jardin 2021 - un endroit magique"

Quand je ne suis pas dans le jardin si la météo l’empêche, j’en profite pour passer du temps à ‘Barn station’. Voici une petite vidéo pour vous montrer ses derniers développements :

"Parc à Ferraille":

La dernière vidéo est aussi du jardin. Notre jardin est aussi un jardin du souvenir, souvenirs plus que poignants pour sûr.

Les larmes me montent aux yeux à chaque fois que je la regarde.

"Toujours présents dans nos coeurs - Automne 2021 et avant"

À une nouvelle année....

Phil et Annick

X-mas 2021 Noël Lack-of-News Letter.

Version française ici

Yes, we are still here, lost, but not quite forgotten. Hanging on to our sanity by our fingernails. 

Like everybody else I guess.

This, as you will probably have noticed by now, has been a unique year. At least, it had better be... 

Some real crap has gone down in the last twelve months, but despite all that effluent, there have been some highs, some truly great moments. Between these two extremes, life has gone on, albeit in a notably more isolated way than was previously the norm. Again, we are lucky to live in such a place as this. 

So this newsletter is to consist of just four videos. The good, the bad, the weird, and the new normal.

The happy stuff, as usual, involves family and friends. The devastating stuff; also. So I'll start with a happy video; a video of family together. Then a video of that part of paradise where I spend the majority of my time; the garden. Then, after a short diversion, a final video that you should avoid at all costs...

First, the good times:

 

I hope that warmed your heart as it does mine. 

There is much to do in life. For me, I find walking and working in the garden heals the troubled soul. So here is a video tour of it. I hope it helps heal your soul too.

"Take me to the fantastic place, take the rest of my life away."

This, as they say, is my life...

When I'm not in the garden, when the weather forces me away, then some time can be spent in the 'Barn Station'. Here's a very short video showing the latest bits I've been working on.

The garden is also the basis of the final video. Of the many facets to our garden, memories are becoming more and more important. There are plants and places dedicated to those who have gone before. To absent friends...

I have put more of my heart and soul into this video than any before. Each time I watch it, ocular moistening ensues. Feel free to miss it but don't feel free to mock it. 

And so, onto the next one....

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

Another one bites the dust.

Day 91…

My friend Cock-a-whoop (nearly French for whooping cough) is still with me, keeping me awake at nights partying. I thought he was going away, but has decided to come back like a bad penny…

This hasn’t stopped me trying to find nirvana in the mountain tops…

We’ve had a house full in the Pyrénées this week, two of the fantastic four (Lisa with Christian and Luke with friend Dave) along with my really old schoolmate Geoff (really old, er, as in same age as me…) and Chrystelle and her two kids (Victor & Max). Ten of us, most of whom seemed intent on throwing themselves off mountains. Their success has been well documented by Queen…

Cue lyrics:

Another one bites the dirt…(Victor)

… and another one down (Christian)

… and another one down (Dave)

… and another one bites the dust (Luke)


…

All this falling about caused multiple bruises and the occasional broken bone. Fun eh?

None of which took my eye off the views, which, with the cloud layers below us, were nothing short of stunning.

Same view, different clouds…

and when the sun burst through these self same clouds … Magic!

A great week, apart from the sodding coughing.

Next week, another few days coughing in the snow. Not a bad form of convalescence eh? …

All this coughing lark has had an effect unthought of by whomever designed my bacterial friend. It has given me time. Time spent not sleeping. Time spent not expending energy. Time well spent irritating the world by writing.

5 chapters finished and 15 to go on my photography book(s) with a veterinary bent.

Please read that line carefully.

Check it out at www.philhyde.photos French translation to follow.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes…

…

Hey, I’m gonna get you too. Another one bites the dust. (Lisa)

All photos of me falling in the snow have been deemed unreliable evidence.

Phil

… with Geoff trying to photo-bomb.