Rural France in November. Wherever you go you'll likely find yourself stuck behind an old, fume belching, tractor pulling a barely road worthy trailer . The driver, oblivious to the queue of traffic behind, will maintain a constant speed of 20 k/mh. Half that going up a hill. There may or may not be a brake light. Forget indicators. Unannounced turns can be expected. There will always be someone behind you in a Citroen who will try to overtake you, the tractor and the line of traffic on the brow of a hill or in dense fog. Watching someone in a grey saloon overtake a long line of cars, in the fog, on a hill is a surefire way to enjoy a full cardiovascular workout.
This mornings cow audience is relatively calm and unthreatening. They stay well away from the fence that runs along the lane. To be safe Sophie doubles her pace and stares straight ahead. What you can't see can't hurt you.
As a reward for bravery she is driven off to the modern bakers for a tour of the shopping centre car park and a shared croissant with her master . She watches me dump my cup and the paper bag in the trash can. Match that for the chic high life if you can !
The flags are still up on the village war memorial. By the village pond we meet the Anger Management Man collecting eggs for his breakfast. He informs me that one of his chickens has had a heart attack. This is not the sort of thing you expect to hear early in the morning ( or indeed at any other time ) so it takes a little while for me to process what he's said. Unsure how to respond to the death of a chicken I say ' That's a shame'. This seems to satisfy him.
5 comments:
Somehow, that parking lot shot is very evocative of autumn, with the fallen leaves and empty spaces and Sophie in the shadows in the back of the car. Those trees look like gingkos? We have avenues lined with gingkos in Tokyo, but the leaves are not yet fully changed yet here. We almost had avenues lined with gingkos in New Jersey when I was growing up, thanks to Lady Bird Johnson's Beautify America campaign - somehow, no one realized until it was too late that if you plant both male and female gingko trees, they will produce nuts, which will fall to the ground and smell in the fall. Nobody minds here in Japan, but in New Jersey, the smell was deemed wholly unacceptable and the trees were all dug up and replaced with something else, although I forget what.
In my experience, Audis and BMWs are the worst offenders for ignoring road safety, or laws, for that matter. I have sympathy for the farmers, who are just doing their work. I have less patience for the old guys (always men, only men) in lycra, on bikes two or three abreast, chugging up hills and around curves at glacial pace because of course traffic should stop so they can get in their workout. On back roads, fine, but on major arteries, why are they there, in the fumes?
It looks as though your blue skies and sunshine have deserted you again this morning. The last photo, of your lone car parked with a patient Sophie in the back, looks so forlorn.
Inca wishes there were cows round here that she could bravely ignore, and have a trip to a posh bakers for curly croissant ends!
Roast chicken for the Anger Management Man's dinner?
Hari OM
Overcast and foggy is much too familiar to this reader, so imagine the surprise as I was perusing this page, to have an unfamiliar full-beam light shine in my eyes! It won't last, but just for the moment Dunoon glimmers in low sunlight. The Fieldfares flew through last week, so it's officially winter in my book. Almost all leaves departed. Nothing so pretty as that carpark looks as modelled by Mlle Sophie! YAM xx
I have reached the point in life, of slowing down, and allowing the old tractor to chug along.
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