The Right Thing

Well….

I expect you’re all wondering where we are, what we’re doing and why we haven’t put anything on the blog for such a long time. In fact, it’s been SUCH a long time since we posted anything, you could be forgiven for having got bored with repeatedly checking our site for non-existent updates, for losing interest in our comings and goings, and for eventually forgetting about us altogether.

I hope not. I already know that our new life in the Allier is going to provide us with plenty to write about for years to come – assuming, that is,  that we are not so busy that we can’t ever find time to write about it.

Actually, the reason we have not written anything since The Big Move, is less to do with our incredible degree of busyness, and more (nay…everything) to do with the fact that we STILL have not got an internet/phone service at our new house. Our internet service provider guarantees a transfer of services to a new address within three weeks of a house move, but we could only start the process at the point when the telephone line to the new house became available – which it didn’t till a week after we moved in, since that was when the previous owners’ line was eventually disconnected. Tomorrow it will be two weeks since we started the internet-ball rolling (including two bank holidays), and it looks like the three-week guarantee is more of a description of how long it will actually take, rather than a worst-case scenario (which is what we had initially, if somewhat naively, hoped).

So we are surviving with the occasional email check, courtesy of a plug-in mobile internet key-thing, which provides unreliable (on-off-on-off-off-on….), and v…e..r………y s..l…..o……w internet access on a good day, with a following wind, at vast expense. So blog-writing has not really been a feasible option.

I am, in fact, writing this explanatory post from the luxurious, internet-rich environment of my son’s house in England, where I am on a nine-day visit, timed optimistically to coincide with the due date of my grandaughter’s imminent birth. Simon, meanwhile, is back at the ranch, overseeing the installation of a Very Big Lot of perimeter fencing by a neighbouring farmer with a son full of enthusiam, and tractor front-loader full of heavy rocks, whilst simultaneously carrying out complex plumbing activities, clearing  acres of stinging nettles, and many kilos of indistinguishable rusted metal items that litter the yard and outbuildings, and caring for the chickens, cats, dog, house-plants, and newly-planted vegetable plot. He is a man of many talents.

Whilst some of you may feel that Simon has the rough end of the stick in this current scenario, I feel I must remonstrate. Apart from the fact that I am sure he is finding the daily implementation of his tasks a bloody sight easier, without me looking over his aching shoulder and interminably suggesting Better Ways of Doing Things, I know that he is thoroughly enjoying the bliss and solitude of our new abode. While I, on the other hand, struggle once again to come to terms with noisy, crowded, oppressive (and remarkably grey and chilly) English City life.

Instead of drifting off calmly into the Land of Nod, serenaded by the distant croaking of frogs and the white-noise whisper of crickets, I am kept awake at night by the nearby sounds of football-playing, obscenity-shouting youths, and unheeded burglar alarms. Instead of waking to the song of the nightingale in the great oak tree opposite the only front door (ours) within a 400 meter radius, I awake, unrested, to the clunking, brumming, click-clacking cacophony of people, cars, trucks and Very Many White Vans going about their rushy, busy daily business.

Yesterday, in a desperate desire to feed my craving for the great outdoors, I decided to mow my son’s very overgrown garden lawn. It took me ten minutes, and I didn’t even need to step off the concrete path to reach the back fence. The faceless windows of the neighbouring houses watched me the while, invoking such a sense of paranoid claustrophobia that I retreated hastily to the spurious safety of the thin-walled Inside.

I have indeed become a Country Mouse.

But, I am very happy to be seeing my lovely children, and will be very very happy indeed if I am also lucky enough to see my brand-new, shiney grandchild, before my return to the haven of peace that is my new home.

I love our new home. I love the space, and the peace, and the trees, and the birdsong. I love the green, green, green, and the tinkling of cowbells, and walking all the way around the house and its land without seeing a single soul.

I love the house with its wood-smokey, cobwebby cosiness, and the way it wraps me in soft black silence when I sleep at night. I love the heavy weight of the swallow-stirred barn air, like an empty church awaiting, and the dusty warm of the muffled attic, where the past and present tiptoe together in the slanting rays of sun leaking into the dimness through invisible spaces.

There is very, very much to do, and we will be working for a long time to return our small farm to the wholesome state it must once have enjoyed. But it will be a labour of love, and in moving to live in it, we have absolutely done The Right Thing.