Sound.

Another warm start to the day. Sophie sprints off down the lane in pursuit of something tantalizing in the drainage ditch. Bob saunters along the lane by my side. As we go I tell him about next weeks state visit to Washington by the French President.  He feigns interest but I can't escape the feeling that he'd rather be sniffing whatever it is his sister is now triumphantly carrying in her mouth. At the crossroads we stop. Bob is told, as he's told every morning, that this is his country. Sophie turns on her back and squirms in the long grass. She doesn't need to be told this is her territory. The young garagiste rushes by on his bike and and waves. We turn for home as the farmer in the big Toyota Land Cruiser passes. He also waves. The Westie in the passenger seat beside him leaps into the back and stands on its hind legs barking at us in an incandescent fury until we're out of sight. Our daily routine.

No sign, again, of the ladies from the Women's Cooperative. Although its early The Rickety Old Farmhouse echoes to the sound of birdsong and, now the wisterias finally coming into bloom, the constant buzzing of four or five types of bees. The sparrows, which have established half a dozen nests in the guttering above the front door, have had a bumper year. A score or more of chirruping little heads peer down at us from the safety of their perch. 

In the library Angus finds a book by Italo Calvino. Ignored and unopened for years. A paragraph seems to speak to the bird and bee song of a French village :

There is the moment when the silence of the countryside gathers in the ear and breaks into a myriad of sounds:a croaking and squeaking, a swift rustle in the grass, a plop in the water, a pattering on earth and pebbles, and high above all, the call of the cicada, The sounds follow one another, and the ear eventually discerns more and more of them--just as fingers unwinding a ball of wool feel each fiber interwoven with progressively thinner and less palpable threads, The frogs continue croaking in the background without changing the flow of sounds, just as light does not vary from the continues winking of stars, But at every rise or fall of the wind every sound changes and is renewed. 

Just another quiet day with two happy dogs.




Well done New Zealand : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/20/jacinda-ardern-maori-cloak-buckingham-palace-new-zealand