Still waiting

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The cherry trees are in blossom in our Bee Garden.

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The white and the purple lilac flowers are opening their buds.

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The acer tree is in dazzling leaf.

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Weeds and grass are growing before our very eyes.

It's the constant rain that is bringing everything to life - with a little, a very little, sunshine mixed in.

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Little girls are dancing their spring dances: are they being rabbits, I wonder?

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Story tellers are out and about at village festivals.

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I've planted up our pots, now that the danger of frost is past. Soon you won't be able to see the earth as the flowers open and spread.

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We've taken a very small amount of honey.

Like us, the bees need the warm weather to begin. In mid-May last year, bees were swarming, the sun shone almost every day and all thoughts of central heating and log fires in the evening were banished.

We're still waiting for spring!

Reading this week: 21

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There have been numerous hidden clues to Margaret Drabble's interest in jigsaws and puzzles in her fiction over the years. This, her latest book (published in 2009), assembles all her wisdom and deep research in one unique volume. Apparently, there will be no more novels and in The Pattern in the Carpet there is a feeling that the author can finally indulge her absorbing pastime while at the same time researching its history and having fun in doing so.

Woven like a shining thread through the story of dissected maps, illustrated playing cards, mosaics and board games is an account of Margaret Drabble's childhood playtimes with her Auntie Phyl. These were moments of pleasure and security in the troubled years of the war and afterwards. It was not an easy time for time for this intelligent child of stern parents and she was prone, even then, to depression.

It is, above all, an honest self-searching book; its final chapters deal movingly with old age and remembrance. She seems happier now.

***

I was very young when I first read A Summer Bird-Cage and, being fairly inexperienced, I accepted it for what it was: insightful, amusing and quite startling on the subject of marital fidelity and the difficulties young women faced in the 1960s. Sarah (the narrator) and Louise are educated and attractive, with entirely different approaches to life and the freedom which was suddenly theirs. Beautiful Louise unexpectedly marries a cold, unpleasant man; Sarah wanders London wondering when her own life will begin in earnest. Her unrewarding job, her casual acquaintances at pointless parties and her unfeeling family underline her loneliness and longing for real experience. When Louise's marriage reaches a crisis and she drops her cool, superior attitude, the sisters are able to find common ground.

It came to me, on re-reading A Summer Bird-Cage, what an amazing piece of writing this is, for someone so young. Margaret Drabble was 24, not long down from Oxford with her 'lovely, shiny degree', as her character Sarah puts it, and already a mother, married to an actor. Although I am not quite so dazzled any more by this particular novel (many wonderful books were to follow), fifty years on it remains a pretty impressive story.

A lesson learned

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I learned an important lesson all over again this week: ALWAYS KEEP YOUR CAMERA WITH YOU!

We were sitting in the Bee Garden with a glass of wine when a loud noise made us search the sky for its source. A paraglider was circling over the village, so close that we could clearly see the green and white of the wing and the outline of the pilot. As we waved, he joyfully kicked his legs in reply.

I rushed indoors for my camera but, of course, by the time I had fired it up and returned to the garden, the paraglider was almost gone - hence these poor quality photos.

That's the last time I go out without my camera. 

Basket-maker

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The other day we visited our friend Martina, an accomplished basket-maker who lives only a few minutes drive from La Borne.

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Martina's workshop is at the end of the farmhouse where she lives with her husband Robert. The door was open to let in the lovely spring sunshine.

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In the garden there are amusing decorative figures wherever you look, reflecting the happy atmosphere of the Bärfuss household.

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Martina was busy in the atelier, sitting at her special table. It has much shorter legs at the work end and the longer legs have casters so that she can move it around as she needs.

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The room is filled with finished orders and materials. There are examples of her baskets on the walls made for all sorts of uses: carrying, storing and display.

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Having made the base for an oval basket, Martina had just started on the construction of the sides.

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Her tools are close at hand on a little side shelf attached to the bench. A magnetic strip keeps knives with curved blades safely in place.

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An old 5-kilo weight prevents the basket slipping as she works. Sometimes she uses a tool to push through the base to anchor the piece to a hole in the table -  but Martina prefers the weight system.

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We sat and talked about her work and the different coloured willow stems she uses. These are sourced in the Haute Marne and in the Touraine region (where there is a village of basket makers not unlike our village of potters). Conditions are good there for growing willow trees.

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Martina's besom is propped ready to sweep up the willow cuttings.

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On the opposite side of the courtyard we could hear sounds of Robert working in his own atelier. He is a very busy metal worker, renowned for his log-burning stoves which fit especially well into the houses in our area. They look just right in our pottery workshops, studios and farmhouses.

Robert used to be a full time cheese-maker in the Swiss mountains and he still spends time there in summer overseeing cows in the high pastures. Everyone knows his good cheeses and his lovely steady approach to life.

It must be very nice to listen to the special music of one another's occupation as they work.

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Robert and Martina have a friendly collie (too busy with a bone to pose for me) and two cats. We sat in the garden to drink apple juice and enjoy the sudden good weather.

I am looking forward to seeing the finished basket with an open zigzag design next time.

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I love the Martina basket which I have at home. It is beautifully made. I'm going to take a short course at the vannerie soon and I'll be posting more pictures from Les Girardins.

Reading this week: 20

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A Long Long Way is the fourth of Sebastian Barry's novels concerning members of an Irish family at the beginning of the last century. The Independent calls it 'a small masterpiece, unsurpassed in First World War fiction'.

Willie Dunne is Annie Dunne's brother. If Annie's story was heartbreaking, there is no other word for Willie's experiences in the Flanders trenches. I felt again the grief and anger that comes over me whenever I read anything about The Great War. An unknowing and innocent volunteer, Willie joins the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and is shipped off to Belgium where the reality of war, its casual bravery and deep friendships turn him into a compassionate, often bewildered, hero. Meanwhile, back at home in Ireland, rebels are killing and being killed in the Easter Uprising of 1916. There is a strange and moving juxtaposition of beautiful prose used to describe the hell of war. Those safely on the sidelines sacrifice soldiers of many nationalities who are slaughtered in their thousands. Worse, wounded and mentally destroyed men are patched up and sent to re-live actions that should never be asked of any man.

Every day, reading this, I cried. Hugh said, 'I don't know why you go on with that book.' But I had to read on because Sebastian Barry makes clear lessons that have still not been learned by politicians and war-mongers. I wanted to know as much as I could about events that shaped my century. And now I have.

***

Tear a mother from her child - they shall see what devils they raise.

More tragedy! Every time I re-read The Ballad and the Source, I am struck by the intricacy of its emotional plot. There is high drama, the writing is theatrical and extravagant, but there is not a false note in it. There never is with Rosamond Lehmann. She was one of the greatest British writers of the 20th century, born in 1901. 

The novel is narrated by Rebecca, recalling her ten-year-old self at the time when she and her sister came to know a strange family living near their home. She meets mysterious and powerful Mrs Jardine and, because she is a gentle and intelligent listener, she hears and absorbs details of a scandalous history quite unsuitable for a child of her age. The scandal wrecks the lives of three generations: a story of motherless children, of scheming for access and control. Sibyl Jardine shocks because she is both attractive and wicked, but Rebecca and the other children involved love her and eventually forgive her.

Virago chose another weak painting to illustrate this novel. I think it deserves better.

Green and serene

It has taken only two days for the countryside around the village to wake up and show how beautiful it can be. Suddenly the fields are the brightest green. There are wild flowers everywhere and the trees are 'in tiny leaf' as Browning described in his poem that always reminds me of home.

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In the lanes this morning we saw banks of celandines. Their petals are so shiny that they look almost unreal. The name comes from the latin for a swallow, indicating that they bloom when the swallows come back to Europe. Quite right - we saw the first swallows this week.

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Here's another early flower, one of my favourites. Before they open, the delicate pink undersides of their petals shows. The Greek legend says that Anemos, the Wind, gave the windflower its name. It's also known as the wood anemone.

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We see a lot of these brilliantly coloured beetles in our garden. I had never seen a firebug before coming to France but they are a common insect of the family Pyrrhocoridae.

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The forest and the fields are noisy with birdsong. We see fewer birds in our garden now that they can find their own natural food. This great tit was after spider's eggs hidden in the neck of an oil jar on the kitchen sill outside.

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It's good to see chestnut 'sticky buds' opening. They were always part of our spring nature table when I was little at school. No one plays conkers here so the beautiful nuts are left to lie on the ground. We found the blackened remains of last year's crop.

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Honey bees love the pussy willow's pollen. Bees are everywhere now: honey bees, wild bees with furry ginger backs which live alone, and fat bumble bees.

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Primroses come in several shades from palest yellow to quite a dark pink. I'm not sure why this should be. Perhaps the colour comes from some sort of cross with primulas. These are true primroses though. They smell delicious when the sun warms them.

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The lovely cowslip used to be picked in huge quantities to make into cowslip balls. In spite of this, they appear in their thousands every spring. The French name for them is the coucou since they come into flower when the cuckoo returns. Our neighbour's lawn is full of them.

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Another friend's garden was a wonderful sight this morning. There were dandelions in a rich carpet all round his house. There is no point in mowing them as buds grow again the same day.

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In an abandoned garden were pale narcissus flowers. We were tempted to pick a few but we left them to blow quietly in the breeze.

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