Down on the Farm (part 7)

It has been several months since the last exciting episode of my entertaining series about home renovation. I bet you've been wetting yourself with anticipation. I appologise for any soiled underwear.
All that fuss about Brexit, indiscriminate killings and selling my Veterinary Kingdom has sidetracked me from that important thing in life.
Home.
It has been a year since we started this ambitious project. After gutting the main farmhouse to make a home for our dogs and tropical fish, (plus a discreet room for us), and going overboard on the garage to make a home for my snooker table and booze, we are well underway with a complete rebuild of the barn.
What started as a renovation, changed direction when the lack of foundations under the giant pillars holding up the barn forced them to reconsider the gravitational effects of our mahousive planet.
Thus: Plan B.

This new building is to be the Swiss Knife of all buildings.

A home for all manner of assorted goodies. Our pool...

...our various vehicles...

...as well as our pool table and host of exercise machines (more room for scattering clothing) as well as, amazingly, our doves!

Ok, we don't actually have any doves. However, despite this small handicap, we are building a dovecote next to the pool.
Why? You may well ask. It's just something that is done in this part of France. It's a bit of a tradition here, like pétanque, fois gras and year round bank holidays.
Really. You see them dotted around the countryside. You can even buy collections of miniatures!
This dovecote is to be cunningly built so that no doves will be able to get into it. Dove poops and swimming pools do not mix in any kind of approved or acceptable manner.
To compensate Mother Nature, just next to the pool, our ducks now have a new home as well...

You may note the disabled duck access.
This really only leaves making a home for the rest of nature in all its glory. The garden is probably the greatest undertaking of all, and can only be adequately described as terraforming.

And so, my faithful reader, please be prepared for several changes of underwear before the next exciting episode of 'Down on the Farm', bedwettingly called 'Part 8'.

Closed Borders

France lives in difficult times. It is under attack. It's borders are closing. Humour is required...
Paranoia rules over here in beleaguered France. Despite this, two commonwealth colonists originating from good old Hyde stock, father and daughter, have smuggled themselves from Canada into France, to stay with us for a week.
The father (apparently my first cousin once removed), Adam, has visited us before, some three years ago, and as far as we are aware left no unwelcome packages, and whilst here undertook no pillaging.

His daughter, Makena, was previously unknown to us, therefore viewed with suspicion. Her ability to smile radiantly on demand made us even more careful...

Checking their luggage for weapons of mass destruction yielded nothing, although our sniffer dog, Sky, seemed more interested in underwear than explosives.
Fearing their potential destructive power, we decided to tour some fortified towns, well able to protect themselves.

The first, Cordes-sur-Ciel, was not just fortified, but filled with defenders.
Some were mere foot soldiers...

...whilst others were formidable indeed.

Feeling our guests might report back about such advanced defensive capabilities, we pretended that they were just actors. I think they bought it.

Some of the infantry were radically new prototypes...

...sporting a variety of weapons:

Whilst the air power was truly frightening...

We left there tired and hungry, so stopped on our return in Penne, where we ate well, albeit troubled by the reddening sky...

Our next trip was to the amazing St Cirq Lapopie...

...a village perched on the side of a gorge...

and well protected by its deity.

That night, the Bastille celebrations. No humour possible here, the attack in Nice brought the real troubles close to home, as a friend of ours was there...

Our guests seemed beaten by the unyielding heat. Escaping to the river seemed to calm them...

...but that night, Montauban was to show its true colours.
This was to be their last night. It started with incitement to riot, with someone who reckoned he was the Queen, shouting that they were the champions...

...then the rioting started, with the combatants crying that they were 'Bad'...

...then things turned ugly...

And so Adam and Makena parted the next day, and peace returned to our little piece of paradise.

Malevolent Beings

Sometimes you get the feeling that there is 'something' out there. We decided see if this 'something' is naughty or nice. Or neither.
After one aborted attempt, we finally set out in our new rig. The new rig being a combination of our now ancient camper van with renewed electrics, towing the new 3-wheeled scooter on a trailer.

The cunning plan being to find a quiet camp site to use as base camp, then go in search of our goal on scoot-back. Yes, we have gone over to the dark side...

And so, we ended up in a town called Mazamet, at the foot of the Black Mountains in the South of France. The town itself can be described as 'nice' in that it has lots of possibility, but doesn't quite pull it off. It was built after the original town, called Hautpoul, was destroyed by the last crusade in search of the Cathar, that race of peace loving Christians that were so hated by other Christians because of their overwhelming smugness. They were just too 'nice' I guess. If there is evidence of a 'higher power', surely it would be here...
So we pootled on up to this hillside village, part renovated, to see why the Catholics thought it so obnoxious.

It turned out to be quite pleasant. Sitting there looking at the vista below I got the feeling that the ancient inhabitants must have been a little pissed off when being raped and pillaged at the whim of the Pope.

If there is 'something out there' here was evidence that it wasn't something nice. As a monument to this butchery, the Catholics built a giant statue of some virgin woman with a baby (yeah, I've heard that one before. Toilet seat was it?) looking down on the town below making sure everyone does as they are told.

All this time, the sun was beating down, and the humidity levels were in the 'high sticky' region. Any physical activity led to drowning by perspiration. Not too pleasant. After a fulfilling meal in the local foodery, we set off back to base camp to spend a night sweltering.
The next day was no cooler, so we set off north. We were looking for rocks.

Well, we found some, not surprisingly as this region is renowned for them. Big granite boulders lay all about as if placed there randomly by some malevolent super being.
The crowning glory of these rocks is the mahousive 'Peyro Clabado',

a crazy lump of rock teetering on a small pivot.

From this view it looks like our super being has a sense of humour after all. Although, on second look, it actually closely resembles Napolean's hat...
After concluding that there IS something out there, and it's name is Random, we headed home.
As one final twist, our non-existent super being had one final trick up it's non-existent sleeve. On parking up, he (it) gently flicked my scooter off the trailer and left it lying forlorn on its side, completely pillaged.
I blame it on the Pope.

I've finally figured it out.

Ok, I admit to being a little bemused by the vote to leave Europe. What was the reason so many voted for the leave campaign?
Was it Farrage’s personality?
Er, no.
Was it Johnson’s ability to lie? After, he’s one of the few journalists fired for lying. Imagine that!
No.
I’ve finally figured it out. It’s Gove’s ideology.
Everyone knows that when Gove ran the health service, he wanted to ditch evidence based science and the rational use of medicines for homeopathy.
That’s it! The £350 million a week is not to be spent on actual stuff, it’s to be spent on NOTHING. Yes! All the promises will be diluted down (it’s already happening) until there is not a single promise left in a volume the size of the entire solar system!
Genius!
Magic!
Everyone loves a good magician, so we’ll done everyone who voted for the wizard.
One good thing to come out of this debacle is that the vast majority of the young voters voted using empathy, consideration of others, a lack of racism, a lack of greed, and thought for the future. After all, it is their future.
I’m proud of them, but, today, I’m ashamed to be British.

About Time

Time is relative.

Time and relatives. Now there’s a story…

Doctor Who famously described time as a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, stuff. He should know.

It certainly varies hugely from place to place and person to person.

Take the other weekend as an example. In France, May is traditionally packed end-to-end with bank holidays. This year, they tried experimenting by stuffing in an extra one.

Everybody in France knew this. Everybody except us…

We set off north in our newly renovated camper van. The roads were empty, the supermarkets closed. Strange for a Thursday, maybe the financial crisis has hit harder than I thought.

We stopped, on the way, next to a lake north of Limoge, where Sky professed her love for water.

We did the usual stuff, checking out the local old buildings in Mortemar…

…even wandering into the local deity establishments.

So far so good.

This was not to last…

We were heading for the amazing French version of a theme park, Le Puy du Fou. We had our first clue that all was not as it should be when parking in the special motorhome area. Here were well over a thousand vans, replete with teeming masses. Not a good sign.

Thus followed a day of mahousive queues.

This park has some seriously amazing shows featuring seriously amazing special effects.

This would normally be good but, alas, to queue for two hours to see each show does dampen one’s spirits somewhat…

We were with Annick’s siblings.

This is a close family. Big and close.

This was a truly exhausting day, where time concertinad between laborious queues and exciting shows.

We fell into bed comatose that night, ready for our journey home.

On leaving the next morning, we stopped off on the coast near Bordeaux, the Isle d'Oléron.

We had fallen directly into a giant trap.

This island, a somewhat larger version of Barry Island in South Wales, had been attracting the masses over the holiday period like flies to a warm dead thing.

We were next to the sea, so took Sky for her first visit to an ocean.

Strangely, Sky, the well known water dog, discovered that water can fight back. She is actually scared of the sea. Wimp.

The accumulated masses of holidaymakers all left the island at the same moment. Along with us. What should have been a three hour journey home turned into a twelve hour bore-fest with the giant autoroute car park being battered at the same time by violent storms.

Nice.

Time had seemingly been stretched thinly over the canvas of that four day period. Time, however, can also be stretched in other ways in other dimensions. Time can be stretched and confounded by things other than planetary masses. It can be confounded by family.

My wife’s family is nearly ubiquitous. They seem to be everywhere all of the time. Kinda scary but also kinda comforting. My side of the family however are somewhat more scarce. Both in number and in proximity.

Take my brother for instance. Go on, take him. Here he is…

He and I see each other rarely. The last time was two years ago when we cast mum’s ashes into the void. (Lake Windermere actually.)

We have both taken very different paths in life. Very different. And yet, as if by the hand of some ever present but invisible Hand of Fate, we have both arrived, in our dotage, in very similar places. Very similar.

The reasons for our seperate paths may have been, in a way, responsible for keeping us apart, but there were other factors that neither of us were aware of before we met again, some sunny day.

That time has been lost to us, but whatever the causes, we have to put them where they belong, in the past.

And so, dear readers, to the present. An invitation to visit Mallorca and join my big Bruv and his missus for a few days of relaxation.

The world held its breath. Was this to be a long awaited burying of the hatchet? Where was it to be buried?

The omens were not favourable. We were to take off that morning in an Airbus A320 from Bordeaux to Palma. The very same morning that an A320 had disappeared over the Mediterranean!

Obviously we made it.

We started our visit in a restaurant overlooked by the stunning Palma cathedral…

…and then on to the equally stunning abode of my only sibling…

We settled in, relaxed, and spoke of other times…

The next day we were taken on a quick tour of Polenca…

Including the 365 steps…

…to catch a view of the Mallorcan skyline…

Then a quick stop in a bar…

…before checking out more old buildings…

Next day we boarded their Gin Palace, a huge sea going boat thingy with motors and stuff.

…zooming off toward the distant horizon…

…and generally doing boaty stuff.

Well. What do you know? The long lost brothers back together again.

About bloody time.