Spring Awakening

Spring, spring, I love spring, springy, spring, spring. If only it could be spring everyday of the year. If given the choice, Anna, my wife, would choose summer...SUMMER! Three words: watering, sunburn, flies. 

The spring grass is greener, the sky bluer, our windowsills are crammed with seedlings vying for sunlight, much to Anna's irritation. But I have to put up with her demijohns of home-brew, bubbling endlessly, whilst I'm trying to watch The Repair Shop - although I'm not to mention the subject, as the other day we had a glass of the 2025 brew, before the bottling process began, and it had a nasty aftertaste, so we had to pour four demijohns of the Shaws' Shite White (as we call it), down the drain. 

She puts so much time, effort (and expense) into her brewing hobby. Now that our children are all grown and flown the nest she needs an outlet for her maternal juices, which she does by keeping her demijohns warm, feeding them, watching them bubble, she even WhatsApps pictures of them to the wider family, so it was with a heavy heart we had to pour them down the plughole. We had a moments silence and I said a few words as the smell of yeast and stinging eyes subsided. 

Luckily Anna has been distracted from her loss by something shinier, in the shape of two electric bikes, she bought. They arrived in boxes and yours truly had to put them together, which wasn't easy; there was a fair bit of Effing and Jeffing, I'm ashamed to say. But we got there and batteries charged, helmets and saddles adjusted, we were off. 

They take a bit of getting used to, are quite heavy, with a little control panel on the handlebars which gives you a boost of varying strengths; like a giant hand giving you a gentle push when you come to a hill or just can't be bothered. I have my boost on all the time, so my bike is more like a moped.

What a wonderful way of seeing the Deux-Sèvres countryside. You're that bit higher, so can see over hedges and being slower than the car, you really have time to nose into people's gardens.

It was a Sunday morning and we found ourselves in the unenviable position of being without a Sunday bottle of wine, not even the Shite White, so a trip to Intermarché was planned, on our new bicycles, before the place closed at lunchtime. 

Well, we were like Paul Newman and Katherine Ross in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, meandering along the country lanes, and yes a verse and chorus of Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head could be heard rising from the hedgerows. 

Now the funny thing is, places always seem a lot closer when travelling from A to B by car, than when on a bike, albeit electric. And as time ticked by we were cutting it fine and the nightmare scenario of spending a Sunday without a tipple was becoming a reality. So, we pumped up the boost buttons to maximum and shot through the countryside at the best part of 30km/h, breaking the speed limit in a couples of areas.

With seconds to spare, I launched myself from the bike, doing a sort of Special Forces roll through the Intermarché sliding door. My little heart was pounding, I was drenched in sweat and my backside felt as though someone had been pummelling it with a cricket bat. But hey-ho, the life of an alcoholic. A bottle of Les Ormes was purchased and celebratory tube of Les Pringles and the return leg was much more leisurely.

Anna has been embracing the great outdoors not only on two wheels but à pieds; she signed up for a local five kilometre randonnée around the pretty village of Saint-Généroux (if you know it). She had a wonderful time and in true Anna style, when watching The Repair Shop that evening, suggested later in the year, we do the 780km walk of the Santiago de Compostela!