Life In 79

We have a house guest. A dog. Which is staying with us for ten days. As I write, we have her for another three days, seven hours and 34 minutes. We like dogs, we had a dog, we loved that dog, on the whole, but she left us after 14 years and now resides on Rainbow Bridge. Ever since, we have been thinking about getting another, but the commitment; being dragged down the road for the early morning walk in the lashing rain, scrubbing fox poo off her neck having rolled in a pile, picking up her turds in a plastic bag, coaxing her out of the under-stair cupboard after bonfire night. But we loved that dog and when we took her, for the final time, to the vets in Airvault we wept like school girls. It's been four years since she went...we found her passport in a drawer the other day and remembered the happy times. She was a Labrador and would hurl herself into any puddle of stagnant water she could find; she even dragged my dad into the canal one time...happy memories. But I think with dog...

For some reason Mr Ryan Air has decided that flights landing at Poitiers Baird should be moved to the middle of the night (with the now standard delay added on). I was going to pick up our four month old granddaughter (she wasn't travelling alone, her parents were visiting too). It was to be her first time on French soil and we were very excited. A cot had been erected, nappies from Aldi (size 3) purchased and a large Tupperware container was ready to act as a makeshift sterilizer. The first part of our airport run is cross-country and having done the route so many times it has become second nature, but driving at night was a different matter. I found myself creeping along at 60km trying to avoid all the wildlife that decided to commit hari-kiri when my car passed by; a fat ragondin just outside Gourgé hurled himself towards the front tyre (luckily my ninja driving skills kicked in and I managed to dodge the big fella), there was also what looked like a pine marten jogging alongsid...

In the frozen north of the Deux-Sèvres lies the picturesque town of Airvault, a   Petite Cité de Caractère   no less! But on the edge of this town the ground shakes as a behemoth awakens.   The ageing cement works, after 103 years, is having an upgrade; a new, all singing, all dancing, environmentally friendly, cement producing machine is being built (the local disused railway lines have been reopened to transport the grey stuff around the world), producing less CO2 emissions and cutting water consumption. Now I'm all for progress, but like a mythological Greek Titan pushing its way out of the earth it rises above the skyline and can be seen for miles around (I can see it at the bottom of our road and Airvault is 9 miles away).   People get their knickers in a twist about wind turbines, but their graceful turning, I find, has a certain charm. The structure that is being constructed to house the furnace at Airvault is like the Great Eye of Mordor casting a shadow acro...

After our first child was born, my wife, Anna, said 'never again'...two years later, out popped number two. The memory is short. So it was with our latest camping trip. We perused our road atlas and La Tranche-sur-Mer was our agreed destination.   The campsite was booked, tent and inflatable mattress lobbed into the back of the Dacia, the cat's rotating feeder filled and we were off ...to the seaside.   I thought our last campsite was plush, this one was even plusher with swimming pool complex, café, boulangerie, gym ...there was even entertainment laid on in the shape of Clown Camembert (the French do love a clown), all for 28€. It was such glorious weather we decided to only erect the internal section of our tent, allowing for air to circulate as well as a view of the night sky through the netting. Beautiful. La Tranche-sur-Mer is north of La Rochelle and the golden sandy beaches give a panoramic view of the Ile de Ré. The town itself is quite nice but does have a touch o...

No sooner was the child born than Anna, my wife, was booked on to the first Ryanair flight back to the UK.   Our granddaughter had been born two and a half weeks early, which threw our plans out of the window. I was working and could wait a fortnight to meet Ari, 7lb 7oz (Ari as in R.E., not Ari as in 'Arry [Redknapp]). Anna couldn't wait to get her hands on new-born flesh so was flying over immediately, staying in a Travelodge for three nights (supporting the new parents, when needed), flying back to Poitiers, having a week to recover and then driving back to the UK (I don't fly), with me, as originally planned. Apart from being jaundiced, having a lump on her head and being tongue-tied (all now resolved) the baby was perfect in every way, Anna reported back after her initial visit. I had run through various scenarios in my head of the first meeting with my granddaughter; I would be handed the child, raise her to the heavens (like Simba in the Lion King or Kunta Kinte in R...

I was up a ladder doing a spot of painting in the picturesque town of Gourgé. It was one of the many bank holidays in May, and the one day of the month it didn't rain. I was on a relatively busy road, for France; a car would pass every ten minutes, as well as a constant stream of cyclists who were following the river Thouet bike trail, which got me thinking.   Back at the compound I announced to Anna, my wife, the plan for us to cycle from Parthenay to Thouars, at which I saw her rolling her eyes. To be fair to her I do have a tendency to come up with ludicrously ambitious (often expensive) plans which, when reality sinks in, become scaled down dramatically. My ability to underachieve has always filled me with a sense of pride (for my O levels I got straight Cs across the board). Our bikes had not been ridden for two years, so I hauled them from the shed, blasted all the bat poo off them with my trusty Karcher, pumped the tyres up and oiled the rusty chain with some chainsaw oil. A...

Anna, my wife, has left me. I am alone...alone in a draughty French farm house in the middle of nowhere, in the frozen north of the Deux-Sèvres (which most people who live outside Deux-Sèvres haven't heard of... 'Du Sevs' they say 'where's that?'... 'An hour's drive west of Poitiers' I reply... 'Where's Poitiers?' they retort... 'We're an hour's drive east of La Rochelle' say I... 'La Rochelle?' they counter...'We're about halfway down France!' ). Not wanting to over dramatise my solitude, I have the cat for company (although conversations are a bit one sided) and I pass the long evenings with extra pop and crisps enjoying The Repair Shop, which I'm not usually allowed to watch (being Scottish Anna struggles with the sentimentality of the programme, whereas I weep with every reveal). She is in the UK helping her mother (who is having an uber-bunion removed) as well as attending the baby shower of ou...