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Happy New Year

Happy New year to you all

2020 has been a challenging and unexpected year for us all. Let’s hope 2021 allows us to once again visit and hug loved ones and find a way forward through the pandemic.

In our corner of rural France, the weather has been and is very cold – the house even colder! Great excitement this week, our new post box finally arrived. We inherited a tiny post box with the house and have long promised our lovely post lady a decent sized post box so she doesn’t have to trek down our drive every time something larger than a pin arrives! It will also be great not to have wet post when it rains.

Finally the new one is here. Very shiny and new and huge! We now need to finalise discussions with the post lady as to an appropriate location. Rural post-people here cover huge delivery areas by van so post boxes tend to be situated so that they can deliver as efficiently as possible, in many cases by leaning out of the van window to pop the post in the box. Quite often you see post boxes in unusual places and then realise why – so the post person can deliver without leaving their van. Quite clever really. Once we have sorted out its location, we are supposed to get La Poste out to approve its use. That’s the way it is here apparently. I am waiting for a chat with our post lady to sort this out. Something for next week. We might paint it too.

We are really enjoying the wildlife here and are so lucky to be able to look out of the window and often see deer, wild boar, hares, etc in the fields around us and plenty of birds of prey soaring above. One time we saw a family of wild boar of all different sizes – about 7 or 8 of them. We also have Ragondin in the lake nearby – they make such a lovely noise when there are a few of them. When I first saw them I thought it was some kind of mutant rat, either that or my eye sight was much worse than I realised! Ragondin are Coypu in English – I have to confess I had no knowledge about them, but they are lovely to watch playing in the water. We also see plenty of wildlife out on walks, a joy. The local farmers are less keen on the wildlife trampling around their fields, so La Chasse (hunting) is greatly supported here, and a big feature of rural life. It has become quite controversial as there have been a number of accidents involving people who were not part of the hunt.  It also means thinking carefully about where and when to walk the dog on our local hunt days – Wednesday and Saturday (mainly).

This week we were out for a walk along the roads near us on a seemingly tranquil Wednesday. We hadn’t heard any gunshot, which we often do. The skies and views were, as ever, amazing. We have even seen the Pyrénées this week.

We always make sure we avoid wooded areas on hunt days and stay on the open road. I always wear a bright red jacket! We know walks are a little risky and usually try to go at lunchtime when the hunters are eating. Anyway as we were walking on the main road we heard a pack of hounds not far from us in a wood below where we were, definitely moving but seemingly not towards us. Suddenly over the brow of a hill from the wood we saw 3 gorgeous deer running for their lives straight for us. For a moment we froze with visions of dogs and gun bearing hunters appearing after them. We didn’t really know what to do or where to go, other than encouraging the deer to run – which they did safely across the fields. Sadly we suspect that the dogs had cornered another deer as they did not appear but had definitely stopped down in the wood and were making a lot of noise. Not a fun moment in any sense and a real lesson in the dangers on hunt days.

Other than that our Christmas and New Year this year have been quiet. We are still under an 8pm curfew in France, not that we are going out at the moment. Today we caught up with family by Zoom and relaxed by the fire. I think the rescue animals have got the hang of that very well.

Occasionally there are books or films that really touch me. One of these is a lovely book that I bought this year: The Boy, the Mole, The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy (published by Ebury/Penguin, 2019). Many of you may know it, but if you don’t it is a truly beautiful book with many wonderful drawings and pertinent messages for the times we find ourselves in – too many to choose from. However this week I thought I would pick one for New Year’s Day: ‘“The greatest illusion”, said the mole “is that life should be perfect”’.

My best wishes for 2021 and thank you for reading my blog. When I started I said it was a bit scary starting and it was. However I am enjoying writing it and I hope you are enjoying reading it too?

Next week a quick look back at some favourite things in 2020.

Stay safe.

Ali x

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