Tag: France

Eclipse ready and waiting in France

Well, it’s the eclipse tomorrow night and, here in south west France, we’re having a party down by the boulodrome to welcome it.

In what’s called an ‘l’auberge espagnole’ (in the UK, we’d say ‘bring food to share’ and in the States they’d call it a ‘pot luck supper’), we’ll have plenty to eat as we gaze at the night sky, ready for the big event and then maybe the annual Perseids meteor shower a bit later on.

Much earlier, just before sunrise, we’ll have the grand parade pf six planets aligning in the morning sky.

So quite a few lovely celestial happenings all on one day.

I feared I might only be able to view just two of them when my promised eclipse glasses failed to arrive on time via Amazon, despite ordering them two weeks ago.

Like everywhere else, there’s a run on these special specs and even E Leclerc has sold out.

But La Poste has just come by and delivered my lunettes.

I was so happy I almost hugged the postwoman.

Back in 1999, I was editor of The Bridport & Lyme Regis News. I saw the total eclipse while perched on the rickety steps to our old office, which should have been condemned to be honest, but this was in the days when local newspaper offices were famous for being squalid to say the least.

The one upshot was the office was at the heart of the community so we had stories coming into us in person on a regular basis.

At the allotted time, the eclipse did its thing, the lights in Bridport’s main street came on and the birds came home to roost.

Down at West Bay, where my chief reporter was installed, the seagulls did not know if they were coming or going as darkness fell on the many spectators and holidaymakers soaking up the view.

A young Number One Son climbed Hincknowle Hill on the other side of the road from The Half Moon Inn at Melplash (which his stepdad and I were running at the time) and watched it with Mr Grigg and a group of fascinated villagers.

It was one of those very unforgettable experiences.

The one tomorrow night will be a deep partial eclipse for the UK (about 95.8 per cent at Lands End) and about 99.5 per cent for us in France.

Now I’ve got the glasses, I’m looking forward to it.

Take care out there.

Love, Maddie x

Okay, French heatwave, you can stop now

Here in South West France there is little let-up in the rampaging heatwave.

Occasionally, a storm will break the stalemate and the plants breathe a sigh of relief and stop slouching for just a second. But then we’re back on the endless treadmill of feeling hot, hot, hot.

There are clouds in the sky this morning and a slight breeze whipping around my bare feet so I’m using the time in my little office to get on with some project planning.

I’ve done some writing, done some editing and now it’s time to sit back and think about marketing my new novel, which is due out on Kindle later this month and will be launched as a paperback in the autumn.

I’m also working on a narrative non-fiction story which will take me halfway around the world and probably won’t be finished until 2028.

So there’s plenty going on in my head, but the heat makes my brain scramble and opens the door for lethargy to just come on in and wipe its feet all over my creativity.

In other news, the travelling pan has arrived for the village’s Giant Omelette fete on Friday evening.

I’m presuming it was delivered on this trailer although, in a flight of fancy, I imagine it obligingly rolling up the hill and parking itself in its annual spot before thundering on down to another local community event.

It serves a variety of uses round and about, including accommodating another village’s Giant Paella and then someone else’s Moules Evening.

It’s a very helpful and useful little big pan.

I think I’m going for a lie-down, the heat seems to be getting to me.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x

PS You’d think the heat would stem my appetite. However, I live with a foodie who loves to cook and also to eat.

Stormy weather

There was a massive storm where we are in south west France last night.

The crack of thunder was so fearfully loud, I fully expected the house to be cleaved right in half when I ventured out with the dogs first thing this morning.

The last time I’d heard such a roaring snap here was a couple of years ago when one of the garden walls was struck by lightning and tumbled into pieces.

This time, fortunately, the house was still standing. The ground was saturated with much-needed rain and the outside water butt was full to the brim.

There was a marvellous freshness to the air which I could almost taste.

The change in the weather is a welcome break from the soaring temperatures we’ve been experiencing for many weeks.

Family, friends and even readers of my People’s Friend column have been in touch, worrried we might have been caught up in the terrible fires that have swept through tinder-dry pine forests near Bordeaux.

We are fine, but the horror continues for so many in France, and in Spain, too. I heard that even Scotland is not immune, with smoke from a wild fire in the Cairngorms blowing into Aberdeen, nearly 60 miles away.

Climate change is the biggest threat to humanity and we ignore it at our peril.

The lower tempteratures continue here for a day or so and then it’s back to the new normal, with the weather app on my phone showing 38 degrees on Wednesday.

Take care, wherever you are.

Here’s to blue sky thinking

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

A bit of a ding dong

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.