France – Maddie Grigg

We arrived in France on Thursday, just as the weather changed.

By Good Friday, in the south west of the country, the sun was out, the sky was blue and we were thanked for bringing the weather with us.

As if.

Just like the UK, it has been a cold and wet winter here in France. So to see – and feel – that shining orb looking down warmly – well, it’s been a welcome visitor with a smiley face and absolutely no baggage.

Today, our part of Dorset is similarly clad in warmth. Spirits soar and everything in the garden is lovely, if you forget world events and personal traumas and focus instead on the trees ditching their winter wardrobe and grabbing their spring and summer clothes from nature’s rail.

Lush Places gets back to normal tomorrow, with temperatures plummeting and roadworks all over the place as super-superfast broadband is installed by a roving crew, leading to faster internet speeds and frazzled drivers.

Here, we’re set fair until Sunday when temperatures, too, will plummet along with (if there was any justice in the world) fuel prices. But we all know justice is in short supply these days so I’m not going down that particular route for fearing of reaching a dead end or one great big pothole.

Gather ye rosebuds while you may and make hay while the sun shines and all that.

Be kind, hope for the best but expect the worst and you will never be disappointed.

Speak soon.

Maddie x

The church bells are still silent in Lush Places.

Meanwhile, I’m in France where the church bells in our village chime the hour twice, every hour (it’s about to strike three o’clock and they’ll go dong, dong, dong. And then a break and then dong, dong, dong again).

But the bells here do shut up at night. However, during the day, at noon and at seven o’clock, they chime until they’re fit to burst, calling in the workers from the fields for lunch and evening meal respectively.

Last week, a former colleague reminded of a notice I’ve seen in many French villages, drawing outsiders’ attention to the perils of rural life.

This is the country where village signs up and down the land have been turned on their heads. This latest farmers’ protest alludes to having their own lives turned upside down by contradictory instructions. See the BBC story here.

I hope a solution can be found to the silencing of our village bells back in Dorset.

And wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in addition to the automatic hourly chiming being restored, a new team of bellringers steps forward to pull the ropes on Sundays and high days and holidays?

The bells aren’t rung on a Sunday at the moment because there’s no tower captain nor regular team of ringers.

It would be lovely if the positive outcome of the silence of the bells story was that volunteers joined forces for bellringing to happen once again.