It's raining, hooray. French bacon, wild mushrooms, toms and fried eggs for breakfast. Gerard's leg is giving him gyp so our bread making and lunch has been called off.
Actually it's hardly rained at all, certainly not enough to do the potatoes any good. Thomas' friend Fleur Gwendolyne dropped in, with her very hippie motorhome including a little chimney, stunning looking, on her way back home to her farm in Brittany from a visit to the Pyrenees. I fiddled about with Metanoia Chapters 27 - 34, getting ready for the big proof read, and dibbled with my accounts and booked a flight to Bristol for Oscar's christening (Ryanair from Limoges - €103, which was a pleasant suprise, as I was reckoning on more like €200). Aspasia messengering me - very keen for me to look at her apartments / houses in Naxos town, but as they are booked for the week I'm there, it seems a bit pointless (and one's 4 beds, the other's 8, so a bit OTT for my needs). Then I went off to explore the estate instead of evening meditation - saw a sanglier bed, still warm, and a wallow down by the river, and a large shoal of trout like fish waiting below the dam at the bottom of the lake. The stream below the lake is lovely, clear and clean, with a stony bed and several large pools. Carpets of wild flowers in the meadows, and acres of wild garlic and bluebells in the woods. A beautiful smell everywhere. And I saw the three or four cedars lying where they had fallen - they look eminently salvageable to me, worth a try at least to split them, despite Jean - Christophe's pessimism.
The clear felled areas look quite promising - an involuntary coppicing - lots of hazel, oak, maple and ash, and strangely a few isolated acacia that the Turks decided not to fell - very tall and straight, so hard to understand why they left them. Maybe acacia aren't commercial. Jean Christophe says they split very well and make excellent fence posts and firewood.
Facebook reminds me On the Rocks are having their opening party tonight - I've already sent my apologies (I'll be 14 days late - good grief that's all the time there is until I go to Naxos). On the Rocks without alcohol might not be such fun. Have to try, and go and say hello to Giorgo at Fragile, and ask him about land to lease.
I missed lunch, after my full English, but we're having sausages for supper and Delyth's cooking so it should be nice.
Finished Do No Harm, by Henry Marsh, which was very good. He's very bitter about management in the NHS (and government interference and policy generally) - Andrew is surprisingly defensive, and clearly doesn't like consultants. I expect it's mutual. I still haven't finished my letter to Sukie, that I started after reading what he wrote about his own little boy being diagnosed with a brain tumour.
I've started Shadows of the Wind, which Ingrid gave me before I left. Set in Barcelona, just after the war / Civil War. So far, so flowery, but I think it'll be good, and it's very long. I must be busy, I'm reading very slowly. It'll probably keep me going until I get to Naxos, and I can fill up at Vangelis' bookshop.
Supper did not disappoint - excellent sausages, goat's cheese and anchovy quiche, tinned petit pois, apple tart from the patisserie with creme anglaise . . . fresh croissants for breakfast.
Actually it's hardly rained at all, certainly not enough to do the potatoes any good. Thomas' friend Fleur Gwendolyne dropped in, with her very hippie motorhome including a little chimney, stunning looking, on her way back home to her farm in Brittany from a visit to the Pyrenees. I fiddled about with Metanoia Chapters 27 - 34, getting ready for the big proof read, and dibbled with my accounts and booked a flight to Bristol for Oscar's christening (Ryanair from Limoges - €103, which was a pleasant suprise, as I was reckoning on more like €200). Aspasia messengering me - very keen for me to look at her apartments / houses in Naxos town, but as they are booked for the week I'm there, it seems a bit pointless (and one's 4 beds, the other's 8, so a bit OTT for my needs). Then I went off to explore the estate instead of evening meditation - saw a sanglier bed, still warm, and a wallow down by the river, and a large shoal of trout like fish waiting below the dam at the bottom of the lake. The stream below the lake is lovely, clear and clean, with a stony bed and several large pools. Carpets of wild flowers in the meadows, and acres of wild garlic and bluebells in the woods. A beautiful smell everywhere. And I saw the three or four cedars lying where they had fallen - they look eminently salvageable to me, worth a try at least to split them, despite Jean - Christophe's pessimism.
The clear felled areas look quite promising - an involuntary coppicing - lots of hazel, oak, maple and ash, and strangely a few isolated acacia that the Turks decided not to fell - very tall and straight, so hard to understand why they left them. Maybe acacia aren't commercial. Jean Christophe says they split very well and make excellent fence posts and firewood.
Facebook reminds me On the Rocks are having their opening party tonight - I've already sent my apologies (I'll be 14 days late - good grief that's all the time there is until I go to Naxos). On the Rocks without alcohol might not be such fun. Have to try, and go and say hello to Giorgo at Fragile, and ask him about land to lease.
I missed lunch, after my full English, but we're having sausages for supper and Delyth's cooking so it should be nice.
Finished Do No Harm, by Henry Marsh, which was very good. He's very bitter about management in the NHS (and government interference and policy generally) - Andrew is surprisingly defensive, and clearly doesn't like consultants. I expect it's mutual. I still haven't finished my letter to Sukie, that I started after reading what he wrote about his own little boy being diagnosed with a brain tumour.
I've started Shadows of the Wind, which Ingrid gave me before I left. Set in Barcelona, just after the war / Civil War. So far, so flowery, but I think it'll be good, and it's very long. I must be busy, I'm reading very slowly. It'll probably keep me going until I get to Naxos, and I can fill up at Vangelis' bookshop.
Supper did not disappoint - excellent sausages, goat's cheese and anchovy quiche, tinned petit pois, apple tart from the patisserie with creme anglaise . . . fresh croissants for breakfast.
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