I’m just back from a new- routine -drive to ‘my horse’ Coriander who lives a 10minute drive away. I have recently been asked to ride Coriander as Paul, her owner since she was a young two year old filly, has become too heavy for her now that Coriander is 17 years old. I didn’t want to ride today, it’s cold out there – 6 degrees Celsius with no promise of a visit from my ‘favourite friend’ here, the sun. I set out reluctantly with the end goal in mind as suggested, apparently, by that 7 -successful- habits -guy. I want to be able to ride Coriander on long out rides with horse fiend, I mean friend, during the long summer days, and Coriander – who hasn’t been ridden for nine months – needs to get fit enough and hopefully far less jumpy. At the moment every sudden movement, even by a tiny bird, causes her heart to leap into her mouth with very literal results. Just relieving a ride on her, during that half- awake -time early in the morning, causes my entire body to jerk an inch across the mattress.

Today the leafless trees standing sentinel along aspects of this new- routine -drive looked grey and old, with tired brittle bones. Usually they seem mysterious and sensuously secretive, their grey intermittently turned silver by the alchemist sun. When massed together against a not too distant hill they call to me, and I know if I could morph into a giant and pass an outstretched hand gently over their spiky surface, I would find gazing down into my upturned palm – fairy dust.

But today instead of reverence a line from a poem wafted through my mind as gloom dominated the ambience. But I have just discovered, after doing a google search for a poem with the phrase ‘In the bleak midwinter’ that it is in fact a hymn, so reverence was there after all.

>a

On the third day here I drove on my own to Carhaix, 30 minutes away, repeating continually in my head – ‘drive on the right hand side, look left’. I was looking for special book bags apparently required by the school. I had been told to look for a shop called La Claire which was opposite LIDL. At the point of despair as I stood ‘lost’ in yet another shop ‘opposite LIDL’, the large sign across the road blaring E.Leclerc, which till this moment had been dismissed as a shop selling electrical goods, suddenly metamorphosed into Le Cler(c).

And hey presto, narrowly escaping my first collision as I drove out of the car park on the left hand side, a minute later I was walking the isles of a traditional large supermarket. It was the most familiar thing I had experienced since arriving in France and I found I was feeling rather emotional, like having a group hug with some fellow shoppers did not seem completely ridiculous. They even had a red shopping basket on wheels.

However I could not find anything remotely like a school bag and the longer I roamed up and down the isle’s the less familiar it all became as even the bread isle seemed foreign. Then I overheard two people speaking English and so plucked up the courage to ask them about school bags. The woman politely explained that she didn’t know what I was on about as her children just use any old rucksack.

But I did find cornflakes and with about 12 other small purchases headed for the check out. Once again I had a ‘proud to be potentially French’ moment as I noticed the complete absence of plastic bags. People simply place their produce directly into their trolleys. Plastic bags are such a menace in many parts of Africa, littering the vast tracks of landscape and clogging up rivers.

Then it was my turn to pass ‘check out’ and I was met with a volley of French. I gathered I was not allowed to take my red basket on wheels any further, as unlike the larger trolleys, it had not been secured by depositing a retrievable Euro in a slot. So I tottered out the shop balancing my twelve items on the cornflakes box and for the first time felt a little bit weepy as the little-girl-within cried, “I’m far away from home and I want my mummy.”

Since that first visit E.Leclerc has become simply a sterile supermarket which we try to visit as little as possible, as we attempt to live as much as possible off the produce of Le Coty. I also have a large super-plastic shopping bag in the boot of my car which I sometimes remember to take with me when shopping. And there’s been no more ‘supermarket sniffling’.

Barn Owl by Richard Dove

Wordless Wednesday

While out horse-riding two weeks ago, I was told of the incident when a group of Breton nationalists fired a missile at the local television mast in protest at the construction of the Nuclear Power Station we could see in the distance, sitting grotesquely amidst the yellow and purple heather next to a beautiful lake. Apparently there was no TV for three months. The Nuclear Power Station is now in the process of slowly being dismantled, because it never completed an environmental impact study before being constructed.

The History of this house we are living in must be full of pathos, considering it was around at the time of the French Revolution. It is nearly Remembrance Day when those who died during the two world wars are remembered. The father of one of our neighbours was involved in the French resistance and flew bombers across from the UK. While the two bachelor brothers who lived in ‘our house’ were shunned after the war for being collaborators. A woman living with them, rumoured to be a prostitute, was tar and feathered after the war.

A month ago I phoned someone called Keith to find out about an English Church service, which takes place in Huelgoat on the second Sunday of every month. Keith ended our friendly chat by saying there would be puppies available at the service. Being up there amongst the world’s most gullible I responded that as we had children, it would make for a boisterous combination. After finishing the conversation it dawned on me that he had said poppies not puppies. It is the time when poppies bedeck the people in the media, especially in the UK. They represent a lot of pathos for many people. I think that the red Aids ribbon is possibly the African equivalent.

Richard’s mum told me recently some of her War stories which are full of pathos for her. Immediately after hearing the famous Chamberlain address informing the British they were at war, a siren went off where they lived just outside of Newcastle. Her family assumed it was an official air-raid warning and she and her mother, together with the neighbour’s wife and children, took shelter in a ditch in their garden, while the men held dustbin lids over them. By the time the real air-raids began they had a dank, dark, shelter to take refuge in, for which they wore their worst clothes. Until her parents realized that they could emerge to find everything gone and all they would be left with were the clothes on their back. After this they dressed up for the air-raids. I smiled at the fact that she would hope the air-raid would last until after midnight because then school would be canceled that day. If you arrived at school without your gas mask you would be sent straight home, something the ‘naughty’ children took full advantage of. I thought it was particularly telling in this modern age of endless excuses, that an air-raid was not sufficient reason to cancel an exam. They would simply draw a line under their test, write down the time, retreat to the air-raid shelter and then resume with the remainder of the test once the raid was over.

On my mother’s side there is the story of how my grandfather first saw my mother when she was three years old because he was fighting in the desert in North Africa during the second World War. An experience he was never willing to talk about. My father remembers being unfriendly to the children sent from London to stay on their farm. And the red glow in the distance as the blitz on London began.

I think this time of remembrance is also a good opportunity for me to remember why I was involved in the anti-apartheid struggle. Remember the Land Act, the Bantu Education Act, the Immorality Act, the Pass Laws, the Group Areas Act etc. And celebrate that these immoral laws are a thing of the past.

Benjamin bought this with his pocket money and placed it next to the pot plant he previously bought with his pocket money.

Then we noticed with dismay that  the advert had been placed in February and so we convinced ourselves that Le Coty would no longer be available.  It was disappointing and I was briefly gutted but then fell back on my faith that my life is in bigger hands.

At 7.15am on Monday morning, 4th May 2009, Richard phoned from the office to say he had an e-mail from Le Coty saying that sixty people had responded to their advert but they considered us the ideal candidates.  Yahoo!!!!!!!!!

And so here we are living in the house depicted in the header,  trying to be ‘subsistence farmers’ ourselves.  We hope to use this blog to record our experience of moving  from Africa to France,  from employment to ‘subsistence’ with words and photo’s.