DAY FIVE IN PARADISE

Well not quite paradise but it's definitely Bambi-land. Instead of woken by planes at 5am, I'm woken by a blue tit tapping on the window.   He won't go away until I open the window and then he flies off.   Disney would approve.

I've booked the kayaking for tomorrow for the boys, who seem to have settled in nicely to teenage life, getting up at 2pm every day and grunting the odd yes and no and mumbling wishes and when you say pardon telling you "I've already said that".   My instinct is to go 'fuck you', but as the mother, I don't.   Any way, they sleep, grunt and eat and drink and when in a good mood are rather wonderful. Apart from that, I am v pleased they live in the gite and not the main house.

The French here are even more conspicuously contemptuous of the Brits.   Even the Brits who live here have become contemptuous of the Brits who visit here, as though it's a way to fit in, and they seek acceptance. They are not quite Brit and not quite French. Sort of a Frit or a Brench.  Or whatever admen probably call them.

There are no mosquitoes but the flies are here and there are loads and loads of butterflies.  Absolutely everywhere. It's the year of the butterfly.  And the humming birds (the only bird that can fly backwards, very determined).

I have been practicing yoga every morning - being trees, eagle poses hoping the farmers can't see me as they'll think I'm nuts. I think they think I'm nuts any way, so I don't think that matters.

Communicating with the outside world is still haphazard but I know the weather is crud in the UK and Boris was on a cycle at the weekend with a few other folk in London.

Markets here are theatre. The English locals attempt to sell to the English visitors in strangled French while the French watch on, bemused like wolves listening to people attempting wolf calls like they do in the Canadian wilderness,  not sure whether to pounce but usually too bored to do anything.     I met a man selling and making clogs who scowled at everyone who approached.  He has a hunched mean stance of someone who has crouched over his money for too long and now has a stoop as a result of it.   Either that or he has a very short wife.    Not a Disney character, or perhaps a wicked wizard, you put his clogs on and you sleep for eternity or die a violent death in a car crash in Paris somewhere.   And the woman who knits brought two sheep in to show people where the wool came from.  How original.    I don't think she gave them names. That would have been Disney.

Everything is slightly broken in the house which is a shame as people haven't taken care of the place, or the cleaner breaks things, but whatever, it's still sad.   But there was always a sad bit in Disney films, wasn't there?

Anything else?  Glued 800 crystals to curtains.   My fingers are stuck with super glue.  Watching Little Miss Sunshine.   Forgotten what a fabulous film it is and it's 'emotional lesson' - how you learn more from the misery years than you do the good one. So here we are being blissfully ignorant in France (except for the broken bits..)