Well, that’s that over for a year.  Ever since optometrists started routinely measuring intra-ocular pressure, my readings have been at the high end of normal.  The NHS adjusted the thresholds downwards a year or so ago, so the first time I got an old geezer’s free eye examination (which I was already paying for under the insurance scheme – but that’s another story…), the optometrist referred me.  The NHS being what it is these days, the good news is that I got the choice of going to hospital and sitting around amid scores of sick people waiting to be seen, or seeing, for example, the optometrist at the shop I used to go to till the previous incumbent retired.  Thus I’m seen as soon as I arrive (early) and am out inside half an hour.  The intervals between examinations have stretched from the initial three months to twelve, and this time, since pressure and field results were better than last time, I didn’t have to have those horrible belladonna-based drops that send my irises running for cover.  What a fuss I make!  But then, I am a bloke, after all.

It is raining vigorously.  The fellow across the road seems to be building a boat in the garden, and his wife is rounding up animals in pairs.  Our visiting ducks seem happy to have a greater area and depth of pond to play in, and continue to eat us out of house and home.  But the grass will be knee-deep before I can get out there and cut it without sinking into the swamp.

Having had our first dose of spring in France, we're now getting the second one, as the trees in Kent and Sussex take on their enormous variety of shades and tones of green, and the blossom is starting on the cherries and apples.  We are finally getting the rain we need, and stuff is growing like mad, even with some overnight frosts.  The rain does make maintaining the grass rather difficult, though.  Our notoriously waterlogged back grass is remaining so rather later than usual this year - we have had to jam in the winter and spring treatments at an interval of only a week,  and with the forecast as it is, I don't see much likelihood of keeping it neatly trimmed.  (Yes: we are officially in drought and may not use hosepipes; the grass is waterlogged and the rain-filled pond is overflowing.)  The front is a disaster area - there is far more dead moss than grass, so I guess we'll need to scarify and re-sow.  Or get it grubbed up and replaced with gravel....

Getting quite fired up about our jaunt to Germany.  We'll be visiting Berlin and Hamburg, neither of which I know well, having spent a night or two in each in 1999 and 1984 respectively.  I think most of the pieces of the jigsaw are now in place, though I have yet to arrange the parking at Gatwick, where we have to be by an obscenely early hour.  It will at least be light-ish this time - our last ride along the winding so-called A-road was in pitch darkness.

Martyn is putting the finishing touches to the redecoration of the cloakroom, where he has boxed in the pipework rather elegantly.  We're modestly pleased with the results - the light terracotta walls are nice and bright (despite poor coverage by the own-brand paint from the big shed down the road (name withheld, but it's got an & in it).  The tiling, using up spares left over from the kitchen and the conservatory, though a vile job in such a confined space, appears to have been a success.  The DIY refitting of the WC is watertight.  So far.  Ah, the satisfaction one derives from mundane achievements in one's sad little life.  Not yet 08:30, and there are two loads of washing out on the line in the sunshine and breeze - Yippee!

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of our move to these parts: it was also a Friday 13^th, and as nobody else seemed to want to move that day, we had the key to the house by shortly after 10:00 am, which is some kind of record, I understand.  Five years have made something of a mark on the garden: there was nothing like the colour then compared with now: in flower now we have primroses (from sometime fellow Thursday artist Gladys), polyanthus and spiraea from the old house, and all sorts of stuff grown from seed, like wallflowers, aubrieta and alyssum saxatile.  As for the bulbs, the daffodils are moving into the hay stage, but we still have fritillaries in flower, and the tulips are doing well in their pots – we missed them last year: they came and went while we were in France at Easter.  The magnolia is flowering like mad – when we came here, it was smothered by the leylandii that we had cut down early in our tenancy.  The hydrangeas are starting into strong growth: I’ve dead-headed the one that keeps its flower heads through the winter now that the worst of the frosts are behind us (famous last words) and the new growth is established.  The climbing one on the back fence is growing away strongly, next to an ornamental cherry that is going to flower this year for only the second time since we’ve been here.  (Though maybe it too comes and goes while we’re on our Easter trip south!)  The kitchen window ledge is littered with seed trays.  I started a lot of seed on Monday, and the cosmos have germinated well.  The only other sign of life is from one of the rudbeckia trays, but it’s early days yet!  The roses are mostly starting into vigorous life.  The most recently planted ones are a bit shy, and a couple of miserable specimens at the front look as if they may have turned their toes up.  If so, no great loss.  And I’m looking forward as ever to the iris sibirica, of which we now have several clumps round the garden.  I’m pretty sure that they and most of the polyanthus are descended from plants that grew in my parents’ garden in Scotland.

The birds are busy and noisy: our mallards have been back at intervals, and the tray we feed them from is also attracting chaffinches, blackbirds, collar doves, robins and dunnocks, but also the usual voracious suspects: squirrels and wood pigeons.

On Wednesday we were at the wedding of Martyn’s niece, Nina, now Mrs Steven Smith.  It is a second marriage for both of them, and the wedding was a fairly small gathering.  The day was pleasant and nicely under-stated. 

And Friday 13^th this year was the day my cold started ratcheting up the Beaufort scale, or whatever the equivalent is.  Nuisance. 

Homeward bound, and home

Last task before closing up the house was a trip along to the Mairie to get the necessary form with which to apply for the works permit for getting the side of the house sorted.  Nine pages of arcane administrative French.  There will definitely be tears.  Anyway, Builder Boy came back as promised, and has measured up: he’ll be emailing his estimate through, together with a recommendation for someone to waterproof the roof terrace.

Just as our old house is capable of springing surprises on us, so too is Annie’s.  We had a pleasant and easy drive up there. Arriving in rain, which gave way to a pleasant early evening, good enough for a glass or two of wine out on the terrace.  As I went to replenish wine glasses, however, I found the kitchen floor awash with water.  The shower room WC was overflowing from the bowl.  Water being water, the downstairs bathroom and shower room and the area at the foot of the stairs had become a small lake.  We set to with a squeegee and a couple of brooms and soon had it cleared out.  Next question, of course, is ‘why?’.  Up with the trap on top of the septic tank while someone went in and pulled the chain.  The merest trickle came through.  Annie is practiced with the rods, and after much effort finally improved things a little  next morning, though we reckon that the pipe between the house and the pit may have had it.  Annie’s butcher’s brother-in-law is supposedly the man for the job, so we left a message asking him to make contact.  We meanwhile looked at WC mechanisms, and could find no reason for the float valve staying open – maybe a bit of limescale somewhere – so that may need replacing.  The upstairs washroom WC needed the lot: the seat, the flush mechanism and float valve had given up their diverse ghosts.  I guess the lime scale precipitates and clogs up  the works when they’re left unused for a length of time; and certain visitors are heavy enough to split loo seats.  So our stay will largely have been made up of talking and fretting about plumbing, and doing a few bits of fettling the same.

Later: phone call from butcher’s brother-in-law: what’s the problem, where are you, are you there now, be there in five minutes!  Described the symptoms, showed him the works.  After a few whacks with a club hammer on the pipe where it enters the fosse septique, whoosh!  Blockage gorn!  ‘What do we owe you?’  Rien – rien du tout!  My wife’s the butcher’s wife’s sister, and I’ve done work for your neighbours Mr X and Mrs Y, so it’s all in the family, in a way.’  Just as one would expect from a septic tank fettler in the UK coming out for the first time to a new customer.  Yeah, right.  Even better, the admirable Monsieur Thoïba (who reckons that the pipe is probably OK) is a general builder, so an excellent contact.  Meanwhile, I sorted the upstairs WC, and just hope to goodness I got it all right!  Flushed with success, as it were, maybe I’ll have a go at the rather leisurely float valve in the shower room here at Forges-l’Evêque.

We got away at 07:00 on Easter Sunday, and met hardly any traffic on the way up to Bordeaux, though the down line was pretty busy.  It drizzled most of the way from Sigalens to Folkestone, though we had an hour or so of fine sunshine from where we crossed the Vienne all the way to Le Mans.  On the way south, we rather dread the vast and depressing Sologne.  On the way north from Annie’s we take a different route as far as Abbeville, and the dreich bits are the camembert country in lower Normandy (or at least in grey, damp weather), the grotty industrial side of Rouen (an otherwise very fine city) and the route up from there to Abbeville.  That said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such displays of cowslips by the roadside, and that cheered me up somwehat.  Though the weather kept us down to 110 for a lot of the way, the light traffic meant that we made good time to the end of the tunnel, and were away about 20 minutes ahead of schedule – though not before exorbitant (€2.70) and over-milked tea in paper cups at the tunnel terminal, rubbing shoulders with the great British unwashed.  (Still, at least the man at the café answered my French politely with French.)  Thirteen hours’ travelling, 39 mpg, average speed 63 mph.  I’ll spare you the cost of the diesel, but be assured that we filled the tank before we left France!  But I have to say that, apart from a trip to the least demanding of the local supermarkets, I’m not good for much next day.

Back at base, our plant-minders have been doing a great job, and pots are back in their accustomed places from the north-facing window bay.  The garden is quite colourful: the last of the daffodils are still in flower, and since we went away flowering has started on all sorts of stuff – the magnolia Susan, spiraeas, fritillaries, polyanthus, rhododendron praecox, tulips, wallflowers and pansies.  So it’s beginning to look like our house again. 

Today I have sowed three colours of rudbeckias (don’t know if they’ll come true from seed), trailing sapphire lobelia for the summer baskets, cosmos (on a whim), antirrhinum, dwarf nicotiana and oriental poppies from Immy and Jon’s crimson plant.  A judicious mix of bought and saved seed: we’ll see how they all do.  I’ll make another visit to the seed box once I’ve replenished the compost supplies.  Tomorrow we’ll aim to go and get our tomato plants from their place of safety.

We enjoy our trips to France very much, but now that we’re both retired, it’s also a pleasure to come back home to see what the garden’s up to. 

Spring

I think we're coming to the end of our extraordinarily mild spell.  Afternoon temperatures are well up into the twenties, and winds have been pretty slight for the region.  The almonds (and the peaches grafted to almond stocks) have gone from blossom to full leaf, and the Judas trees and irises are in exuberant bloom.  Most of the vines are now starting into leaf, and the avenues of plane trees are crowned with a cloud of young foliage of a pinkish pale green that I'd have to work hard at to reproduce.  The mares' tails in the sky presage a change to dull and wet, however, so today's the day to do the laundry and get out with the cameras.  We need to go to the market town today anyway since we're very low on essential fluids: red, rosé, olive oil and diesel. 

Nice long Sunday lunch yesterday with Martin and Patricia, he having just paid off a yacht in Gibraltar after a couple of weeks' course in pursuit of his yacht master's ticket.  While we have been basking in the sunshine, he and his companions much further south were cold and wet, and sailing in force 5 to 8 winds on the Atlantic and the Med. 

Essential fluids replenished (according to the volume delivered, the car was a coffee mug away from empty), we paused on the way back to take a few photographs, and Martyn walked back into the village.  Compositions were quite difficult because of the constantly changing light, but unlike a proper painter, I'll be able to choose a fixed image from my pictures.  If I tackle any of them at all.  But the fun photos of the day were of the local notaire fettling TV aerials on his daughter's roof across the road.  I shall keep them off the internet - for a suitable fee.