Chèvre

Maurice Chevalier

chèvre  = goat

Behind the old farmhouse, there is a hollow in which a sheltered meadow rolls up to the woods. At present, it accommodates  a llama and several sheep that have recently given birth to lambs. And there's a goat or chèvre called Maurice Chevalier.

Yesterday afternoon, after I had returned from the Lidl store in Saint Jean du Falga, I looked out of the side door and there was Maurice Chevalier munching happily on the long grasses that  cling to the embankment, He looked up at me as if to say, "What you looking at?" and continued to munch away.

He must have somehow got through the field fence. And he needed to be returned to that field. 

I put my walking boots on and went out to grapple with Maurice Chevalier. He was unco-operative and faced me up with his head down and lethal horns pointed towards my midriff. As he charged, I grabbed his horns like a matador dealing with an enraged bull. Maurice Chevalier bleated in complaint but it was no good. He was under my control no matter how he writhed or how loudly he bleated.

I led him back down to the field and lifted the barbed wire in order to force him back where he belongs. Yorkshire Pudding 1 Maurice Chevalier 0. When dealing with goats you have to show who is the master. And that primeval battle was yesterday's highlight.

Today there's sunshine and I must get off to walk in it - hoping I don't have to wrestle with any more smelly chèvres.

Mercredi

In the village of Coussa's cemetery, I spotted a small Jesus scaling a gravestone. He was dissociated from the iron cross to which he must have once been affixed and looked none too happy about the separation.

Some of the family graves had extra plaques on them. I spotted this one and was surprised that I could translate it immediately. I liked its sentimentality:-

The leaves fall,

the seasons pass by,

only the memory

endures.

The day had stayed overcast but dry and a little warmer than when I first arrived here. Rather than driving to Mirepoix, I donned my boots and set off from the house along a very quiet country lane. 

First of all, it led to a farm called La Monge D'En Bas. I was wary as I approached because of barking dogs. They were running loose and one of them - a healthy black labrador - decided that he would accompany me. He walked with me for about two miles - far from his home - bef'ore running off into some woods. I didn't see him again but I had already caught him on camera. I called him Macron. Here he is:-

I had an excellent, detailed map in my pocket but some of the tracks and paths indicated did not appeat to exist so I stuck to the paved lanes and travelled in a big circle.

It's a mile from Coussa to Robin and Susi's former farmhouse and when I got back to the property it wasn't long before clouds surrendered to sunshine and blue sky. That's sod's law I guess. Here's their place with Pierre Le Citroen snoozing in front:- 

Solitude

A view of Montcagnou where Monsieur and Madame
Laurent  died in a house fire in December 2006

A thick grey canopy yesterday and French drizzle. I did not feel motivated to venture out with Pierre so he stayed on the gravel and I stayed indoors.

I didn't speak to anyone yesterday apart from a half hour phone conversation with Shirley in the evening. I didn't see another human being all day. It was just me and the cats.

I am halfway through "Sons and Lovers". Lawrence was just twenty seven when he wrote it and there are strong autobiographical chimes throughout - feeding the fiction, making it resonate like truth.

The novel's chief protagonist - Paul Morel is Lawrence in disguise. His relationship with his mother is strong while his coalmining father is ignorant and brutish. Paul falls in love with Miriam Leivers who lives with her family in a nearby farm, just as Lawrence fell in love with Jessie Chambers. Similarly, Paul is weighed down by the social mores of the time, by his mother's protectiveness and by his own inability to surrender to his feelings. Miriam dangles on a string, unfulfilled, confused and hopelessly in love.

Very early in the novel there are references to the ruins of a priory and to "Robin Hood's Well", These locations were within a hundred yards of where I parked Clint last week. And there are other references to the very landscape I walked through. However, as a novelist, Lawrence was not bound to adhere accurately to the geography of his home territory.

It's good to immerse oneself in a book - without distraction. And it's salutary to note that "Sons and Lovers" was published in 1913 - just a year before the so-called "Great War" kicked off  - killing twenty million people. The world was changed for ever but "Sons and Lovers" allows us to glimpse a time of relative innocence before the hostilities began.

And now you will be pleased to note, this morning's literary lecture is over. Time to clean up the cat litter and sort out the fireplace. Maybe another mug of coffee and if the French mist ever lifts maybe a trip to Mirepoix and another healthy perambulation in le pays francaise.

Randonnée

At Montcagnou

Monday was such a glorious day. After breakfast, I set off courtesy of Pierre - my silver grey Citroen. It's just a short drive to the small town of Varihles. Leaving there, I was soon on the N20 autoroute heading down to Junctiom 10, north of Foix.

Thence to the D919, heading in a north westerly direction. It was a long, quiet road and I knew exactly where I was heading because I had spotted it on page 90 of Susi's guidebook "L'Ariège à pied" or "The Ariege on foot". This part of the Midi-Pyrenees region is known as L'Ariège.

And soon I was there in the charming hilltop village of Carla-Bayle. My starting point. I strolled around the ancient settlement for a few minutes, noticing its ramparts, its marvellous views of the snowy Pyrenees and how some of its quaint medieval houses have now been acquired by artists. The village even has its own website. Go here.

In the village square there was a fountain dedicated to a seventeeth century philosopher called Pierre Bayle. He was born here and upon his death the village changed its name from Carla-le-Comte to Carla-Bayle. I must admit that I had never heard of him before but in his time he was apparently an influential thinker whose work perhaps foreshadowed The Age of Englightenment in the eighteenth century.

And then I was off, marching down to the nearby lake and then along its northern shore. The route was not very well-marked - occasional yellow stripes on trees. Up to Bellecoste and then down a muddy track into a wooded valley and up again, meeting the lane that leads to Barthe. It's little more than a sprawling farmhouse with outbuildings and baying hunting dogs that were thankfully behind bars.

Down into another valley. Leaping over a stream and then following an overgrown farm track to Montcagnou. The place was abandoned and the farmhouse in ruins. Had there been a cataclysmic fire? Its former inhabitants appeared to be buried there and it seems that they died on the same day in 2006. I wandered around the shell of their home, filled with wonder.

Onwards till I met another track. Treacherous in places with soft mud. Why is French mud so slippery? Fortunately, I didn't fall.

Up ahead, Carla-Bayle was coming into view again. Along the lanes and up the hill to Pierre. In his boot (American: trunk) there was a bottle of water which I glugged like a camel that has just traversed the Sahara.

It was time to head back to Pamiers to buy some things in a "Super U" supermarket.

I spoke very briefly to just four people yesterday. A sun-tanned woman hiking by the lake with a big rucksack. An old man with a flat cap enjoying the sunshine by the roadside at le Badoune. A small, middle aged woman who wanted me to get a pack of  water bottles from a top shelf in "Super U" and the woman on the checkout till. In total twenty three exclusively French words were exchanged - if my arithmetic is correct!

Today is grey and rather miserable but not so cold. The internet is so slow here that photographs take an age to upload onto "Blogger". You can do so many things while waiting. Have breakfast. Clean out the fireplace. Get some more logs from the shed. Stroke the more amenable cats. Take the compost caddy to the big bin by the vegetable patch. Make another coffee.

Four nights gone. Another six to go.

Chats

TREACLE

ZORRO (left) & BOUNDER

DAISY

The four cats pictured above are the most sociable and seem to have no issue with the fact that they have a new and unfamiliar keeper. Zorro and Treacle in particular have shown me plenty of what might be construed as affection though a cat psychologist might well describe it as something else.

The other six cats seem wary of me as if believing they now have a mass murderer in their midst. They are in and out of that cat flap like lightning bolts. These are not urban house cats; they are rural, half-wild and free.

Yesterday was as chilly as Saturday. After doing my chores and reading another chapter of "Sons and Lovers", I drove to Pamier, planning to do a little shopping in the big Intermarche Hypermarket by the autoroute that links Toulouse with Andorra. I knew that this cavernous warehouse-like shop opens at 9.30am on Sundays but I hadn't checked its closing time. It closed at 12.45pm and I arrived an hour later. How was I to survive?

I headed for McDonalds and navigated one of the big touchscreen menus that greet would-be customers nowadays. Personally, I would rather go up to a counter to place my order with a human being but in that regard I guess I am somewhat old-fashioned. Nobody else seems to mind.

Today, Monday, I am planning to go for a long country walk. The sun is shining, the herd is fed so its time to rock and roll. I can clean up the log fire later. Adieu mes amis!

Floc

Friday was deceptive. I picked up Pierre - my Citroen hire car from Carcassonne Airport and tootled westwards to Mirepoix and Les Pujols in gorgeous February sunshine. The land was green and I saw a gang of vineyard workers tending leafless vines ahead of springtime with confident expectation of another profitable crop.

Sometimes in the French countryside you drive through avenues of lime trees that rise like Grecian pillars from the verges. I would have stopped to take pictures of one or two of them but there was never an easy place to pull in.

It was so warm that I wound down the side window as I had not taken time to work out the car's air-conditioning before setting off. To the left, rising in the distance, I could see the Pyrenees dusted by recent snows.

At Les Pujols I turned left on the quiet lane that leads to Coussa. Puddles in the fields spoke of recent rain but as I say in that ethereal light, Friday was deceptive - as if summertime was just round the corner with its sunflowers bending their heads and maize fields nine feet high in sultry air all shimmery with August heat. 

At Robin and Susi's remote property I again looked to The Pyrenees. This is the view from the front of their place at Floc...

Robin was chopping logs round the back and before I ventured there Susi taught me some of the domestic ropes. How to start the log fire. How to turn on the washing machine. How to change the cat litter. How to lock up. How to keep warm. How to travel to one or two of their favourite eateries. How to remember the names of the nine cats. My head was swimming.

Then I went to see Robin wielding his big chopper. He'll be sixty eight on Tuesday. Nobody in the world has known me as long as he has. We are the same but different. I love football and he loves Formula One, motorbikes and skiing. I dislike racing cars and motorbikes and I have no desire to ever go skiing. He has a conservative outlook but I lean towards socialism and fairness. I am a man of words and images while he is a man of axes and engineering. Still, we get along - we always have done. We are brothers with much in common. So many memories. So many years.

Robin with his big chopper. The village of Les Pujols can be seen to the right.

Saturday was cold. Robin and Susi left just after seven - heading to Toulouse Airport and then on to Fez in Morocco. By midday the snow was horizontal and threatening to settle. It wasn't a day for venturing out so I stayed home the entire day and night with my nine "furry companions" - Bounder, Zorro, Daisy, Marko, Polly, Alfie, Treacle, Tinga and Tucker. One or two other cats appeared from nearby farms. Oh mon dieu! I'm residing in a French cathouse!

France

It is just after midnight. In a few hours I expect I will  be flying to Carcassonne in southern France. However, snow is on the weather menu  here and it's also on the menu in the foothills of The Pyrenees. It will be a relief just to get there.

The cats will be waiting for me. French cats. They are not quite the same as English cats. English cats are generally chummy and easy-going but French cats are highly strung and temperamental. I wonder if I will have speak to them in French? "Venez ici mon petit chat! C'est le temps de votre dejeuner!"

I am not sure how I will fill my time but the days will surely pass and what is more I hope to blog from my brother's remote farmhouse. I am taking a copy of "Sons and Lovers" by D.H.Lawrence. I can't even remember if I read it in my youth but that hardly matters.

Au revoir mes amis!