Saints and souvenirs

St Donald
Yesterday's weather: Beautiful, hot but with a nice breeze to take the sting of the heat away.

It's my lovely Mum's birthday today. Happy Birthday, Mum.

We were sitting in the garden yesterday evening and the wind chimes were clanging away to themselves in the background. Jon turned to me and said 'She's everywhere isn't she?'. I looked around to see who he was talking about but couldn't see anyone - I assumed that he was talking about Mirabelle Veranda-Flapper again as I could see the distant waving of a tea towel but he said 'I wake up in the morning and the first thing I see is that lovely piece of furniture she gave us. I go downstairs and there is the window I've just put in that she gave us. Even out here; the wind chimes were a present from your mother. It's lovely, she's here all the time, my mother-in-law.'

We love it that our house is full of reminders of different people, some have visited, some haven't yet but we are hoping they will soon. We have shelf which runs the length of the kitchen and on it is a collection of pottery and glassware. We can say where each piece came from, some were wedding presents (33 years this year but I don't think they qualify as antiques just yet), others we have collected over the years or have been gifts. It is our shelf of memories and we love it.

St Donald
Regular readers know that I always head this blog with the saint of the day. In France, the saint's day is very important. Although a constitutionally secular country for many years, religion is still important to many French people, particularly catholicism and only recently the naming of children after a Saint become less common. The festival day of the saint of one's name is almost as big as a birthday.

Not a lot is known about the Scottish St Donald of Ogilvie but apparently he had nine daughters who were all saints. I'm sure that there must be a similarity there somewhere even though my parents only had two daughters and one son.......! Hang on, I'll just straighten my halo.

So, I thought it rather apt that today is the day of St Donald and I know that my Dad would have loved to celebrate today along with Mum's birthday. So, if you are raising a glass to Mum's birthday today, please also have one for Dad. If he's watching from on high, I know he'd appreciate it.

It is, of course, also St Swithin's Day today and the legend says that if it rains today it will rain for 40 days and 40 nights but if it is fine, there will be clear skies for 40 days and 40 nights. I think we've had enough rain this year. Let's hope we are in for a dry spell.

Dishes and cloths

St Thierry

Yesterday's weather: Fantastic, 26 degrees with a nice breeze

We have a new hobby. A few minutes every now and then are spent trawling through the thousands of channels on our new satellite system trying to find something sensible to watch. We got the system so that we can watch main-stream French TV but we haven't yet been able to align the dish to the correct satellite. This is not an easy task as it relies on one of us up a ladder moving the dish and the other testing the signal on the TV. So we have doors and windows open and one of us (usually me) running from the TV to the window to say what, if any, signal we have managed to find hoping that Jon hasn't moved the dish a fraction of an inch in the meantime. I think we have got as far as the 'M's in the listing now. Media TV was particularly boring (Italian), and the 'Coming Soon' channel (also Italian)was thrilling stuff (not). I can't wait for the zeds. Zoology TV? That will probably be Italian too.

Flappers

We were up early this morning having a cup of tea on the patio at 7am. Sunday mornings are the quietest of the week here. No traffic passes on the road below us, all we could hear was the sound of Mrs Veranda flapping her tea towel.

View across the valley (April 2007 - before the trees were in leaf)

Mrs Veranda (not her real name!) is someone I have aspired to be for a long time. She lives on the other side of the valley to us and, although we can't see her or the rest of her household because they are too far away, we are aware of their presence. Mrs V gets her washing on the line by 7am every day. She airs her bedding over the balustrade of the veranda and is forever flapping. She flaps tea towels, towels, floor cloths, dish cloths and I'm sure she would flap her husband outside to dust him off if she could. Of course by the time we hear the flapping she has already gone indoors just because of the time it takes for sound to travel across the valley. So, as I say we have never seen her and wouldn't know her if we bumped into her in the village store and, actually, the desire to get my washing out on the line earlier than her is beginning to wear off now. However, I think it's time to get outside and beat the rugs.