Get on with my life.

 

Mike and I are sat on our home-made bench.  The picture, though not perfectly composed as I look like a barrage balloon caught saying something like, nerd, does mark a moment for us as this bench has been two years in the making and is now as complete as it ever will be.  Anna and William came over for afternoon tea as we were putting the final bolts in and we all took turns and had our picture taken at this most auspicious moment

We have had a few good days in which we have been able to apply more weed killer on the allotment. The seedlings in the potting shed are now being given names and should really be out within the next week or so but the ground is just not ready. Our philosophy these days in the idyllic and calm environment we live in is akin to a Mexican farmer  with a manyana at the beginning and at the end of each crisis, but I know it will all get done but not perhaps at pace we should be at.

I made a call late last night to a couple selling on 'le bon coin' and negotiated a “don’t sell this before we get there “ deal for a garden table, two benches and two chairs in teak for forty euros. I need not have worried about loosing the deal though as we set off with an eleven o’clock deadline I imagined that the queue of people after us would be immense and timing would be crucial. We arrived thanks to Lovely a half an hour before deadline and as we could not park in front of the house we left the car and trailer around the corner and walked to the house. I had hoped to get the business done early but all the  shutters were up and there was no sign of life so we walked the dog to the nearest patisserie for some breakfast and became acutely  aware that we were in the suburbs of Caen lost in a warren of tiny houses with no parking and no gardens. We are unaware, living as we do, that life in our local towns could be a million miles from where we are in terms of standards and expectation. There was evidence all around us that this was once a small village with a stone wall surrounding a modern carbuncle of a

library next to a barn wall lost in it’s modern predicament. There was a huge stone building with a row of barn doors on the first floor and we wondered what huge and influential crop or activity happened here in the past. Today it had lost all it’s pride and purpose as it argued and protested for its history next to an estate of little boxes and a high rise apartment block where once were green fields and people’s lives. We got back to the house and at eleven o’clock I knocked and knocked again and finally a woman came to the door and showed us to the ‘salon de jardin’ in their postage stamp of a garden. This story is a  story enough to tell you but the shock of walking into a chaotic household took my breath away and I have to carry on. This home was only ten or so years old but oh how the other half live. There was evidence of little girls living there as the washing hanging in the kitchen  was  full of little pink socks and vests and I pondered a reflective fear for this young and vulnerable  life never achieving the joys of making a beautiful home no matter how hard up they might be. They are unlikely to even have pride in their possessions and how are they to be organised and enjoy the ambiences  of a clean and tidy home being brought up in this chaos,  and that just made me sad. We carted the salon out through the house, paid up and left. I tried to make conversation saying how great le bon coin was but the woman just grunted kindly at me and closed the door. We will never have to go there again but this was an open window into life, as we don’t know it, and it makes me angry and frustrated that nothing can be said or done.  Mike and I discussed what we had seen then set off home to our little bit of paradise wishing we could have waved a magic wand to make everything better. On reflection though, I hope as I pull my fluffy warm covers over my head tonight that this little family know how to love and laugh around the table, but then again we had just bought the table so I will just pull the covers over my head and get on with my life.