The German billionaires seem to have a dozen cars parked in their courtyard. All have Stuttgart plates. Perhaps they're self isolating with friends. Late at night the sound of laughter drifts down towards The Rickety Old Farmhouse from the chateaus capacious terrace.
Monday morning. The school bus picks up its gaggle of unhappy passengers. The smaller ones greet Sophie with a hearty ' Bonjour'. The older ones ignore us with studiedly cool teenage indifference.
We head down to the stream and the waterfall. Sophie has discovered that by carefully perching on the stones that line the stream bed she can access the remaining pools of water for a drink and some minnow fishing.
Off then to the cafe with the audacious sparrows. They flutter around in search of wayward crumbs. Sophie glares at them from under her fringe . Today is a quiet ' I can't be bothered to chase them off ' type day.
The lady at the Volvo garage e-mails an offer , with a healthy discount and a good price for the ' Loonj' . It is accepted. This afternoon I'll go over and give her the deposit. Sports cars, practical estate cars and now easy to get into Volvos. Rites of passage. The sports car phase seemed to go by very quickly. 'The Font' wonders if the good price may have something to do with the car having one of 'those' paint schemes. It appears to be the same colour as cold porridge.
5 comments:
I'm impressed that Sophie's titanium knees work so well that she can perch on slippery stones in the stream - it seems like such a long time ago that she was forced to stay quiet through two operations and two recoveries. Cherry seems to be mending from the herniated disk in her neck. We were initially surprised by the diagnosis as we thought the problem was with a foot, but I've since learned that making it hard to walk is exactly what a herniated disk will do. It seems we are lucky to have caught the problem so quickly. I had to laugh at your description of the various phases of car ownership. We have a little Mazda sports car that's now nearly thirty years old. We seldom drive it but we also can't quite bring ourselves to sell it, so we keep it as a kind of mechanical pet. At the moment, our everyday car is in the shop, so the Mazda has been brought back into use. It's like driving a rally car, but still fun. We've even managed to fit Cherry in the back "seat."
"Self isolating with friends" seems a generous interpretation of the German billionaire's behaviour. Mind you, if the behaviour of the crowds watching the Tour de France on summits in the Pyrenees is typical, the virus has plenty of other opportunities to spread. I pity the poor rider who, having burst every sinew to race up the mountain, then has for force his way through a phalanx of maskless men leaning into his face and shouting words of encouragement along with, potentially, a hefty dose of th coronavirus ... For this long time Tour de France and geography fan, it is interesting to see how much browner than landscape looks when the race is held in September not July.
Cheers, Gail.
I know our city birds were hungry over lockdown as they were used to snacking at the outside cafes, and there was nothing for them to eat. Sparrows often seem to survive on crumbs. I have crumbled up my leftover bread from dinner to put out in the yard on my way to work tomorrow.
The advantage of a car the colour of cold porridge is that it doesn't show the dirt! I once had one that colour - mind numbingly boring, but very practical too. Seem to remember that it was a VW, too.
Surprised that Sophie didn't get to the crumbs before the birds!
I know exactly what you mean about sports cars - My brother's car, a Honda, is sometimes hard enough for me to get out of. I'll be interested to see what color "cold porridge" is and what designer name the car maker calls it.
And you are right about the former owners of our new arrival, Lenny. But here is the link to a story about a Lab that appeared in our local paper this week that I'm grateful had a happy ending. Some people truly don't deserve the title of "human."
https://www.loudountimes.com/news/good-girl-lexi-the-lab-thriving-after-local-vets-remove-arrowhead-from-skull/article_000bca20-ef97-11ea-9e7b-7b9c283dfe93.html?fbclid=IwAR18sNH6PR7zu1muRat_Eje9CZYoupo1Fu28KBbhjp0OztY0JBgarzWIC3g
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