Back to White
After a brief family-fuelled sojourn in Little Britain, we have arrived back at our tumbledown farmstead on a wintry hill in the Correze. Despite very strong winds in our absence, cottage #1 is still standing, and the roof is where we left it! The reported heavy rainfall has, however, left its mark. On every floor. It appears that water seeped/gushed down the chimney and also down the gap between the chimney and roof. The chimney has a little roof on it, so the rain must have been delivered horizontally.
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| Chimney roof obscured by falling snow and grey snow skies |
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| Water seeping onto the guest bedroom floorboards |
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| Yellow staining from kitchen ceiling seepage |
Our drive down through France was white. The whole of France appears to be frozen solid under a blanket of snow and ice. There was a brief glimpse of land just after Paris, but, otherwise, we secretly enjoyed our cruise through a never-ending winter wonderland. Of course, all of the roads were completely clear of snow and ice; this is France. I say 'all of the roads', but there were exceptions. When the motorway stretched to four lanes, the fourth lane was left as a bank of snow. And when we neared our farm, the winding lanes were gloriously snowy. Luckily, our British (Japanese) car has a four-wheel drive feature, so we had no need to worry.
The moles were busy before the freeze. I went out today to kick the earth flat. That was a silly idea; every mole hill is frozen solid. I may have damaged my toes. At least they won't be making any more any time soon...
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| No! Wait! What?? How? |
A mouse has been spending some leisure time in the unfinished recesses of the downstairs toilet; there's a scattering of tiny droppings and a patch of urine. But the mouse is nowhere to be found. But that's not the headline story...
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| Mucky mouse deposits |
You'll have trouble believing this story, because I do. And it's my story. It's a story about a glis glis with super powers. Let me set the scene. While we were away, we left a tall stack of baskets filled with our walnut harvest on the kitchen floor. Of course, I can see now that that was not very wise. While I was busying about in the kitchen, I heard an ominous nibbling behind the range. As we put everything in the kitchen on wheels for easy cleaning, I was able to pull out the cabinet next to the range and peep behind the range. The little fur body had disappeared but, oh my goodness, what did I see? Around a hundred walnuts containing neatly nibbled holes in one side. But that's not the unbelievable part of the story... Behind the moveable unit, we'd stored large cake tins, and they were now filled with complete un-nibbled walnuts. Of course, I blamed Kevin immediately, asking him why on earth he'd stored nuts behind the unit. But he denies this. This means that the glis glis (sorry, you may not know what that is; it's an edible dormouse, or loir in France) had climbed to the top basket (we'd noticed that that one had fewer nuts in than we remembered) and transported at least one hundred nuts across the kitchen floor, under the unit, and then stored them in its cake tin pantry. How can a little rodent be so organised? We've since heard it scampering inside a section of the kitchen ceiling. It shouldn't be able to get there. We built this place; we know its geography! Perhaps it installed a little lift and some sliding doors; it seems to possess the necessary skills.
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| A shadowy peep behind the range |
Animal mysteries continue on our farm. It snowed all day and all night, so the snow all around is deep and crisp and even. This morning, there is a set of cat paw prints that leads up to our kitchen French doors, or do they lead away? Whatever one might decide, the trail goes just one way; it either starts or ends at the doors. What is going on?
A FEW SUPERFLUOUS SNOWSCAPES
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