Stuff has passed, water on its way to the sea, under bridges, bursting its banks, flooding lands once dry. And fires have flamed and smouldered and smoked vast swathes of land once: safe. Whatever that means. It’s notional isn’t it? Safety.

A sickness gripped the world. Clever humans developed ways of arresting its relentless decimation of the population. Abating it sufficiently that people feel somewhat secure again.

Unless they are in a war zone. We have too many of those. One is one too many.

I continue to be somewhat: rootless. I’ll try to find a foothold again. Here. And if you want to you can read along with my nonsense as once before you may have done. Or join me for the first time. We can have fun, we can laugh we can have moments of reflection, moments of despair. We can embrace as community.

And what can you expect? In this resurrection of sorts. Each week or thereabouts a feature on a place that I am, or have been: ‘Round My Parts’. Monthly an invited guest: ‘Round Their Parts’. The recognisable random mix of renovations and observations, of places and people and politics and poetry and occasionally a meal shared. But mostly simply a place for me to ramble and write and sometimes to review the work of others, to showcase their poetry, their stories. Maybe mine too.

So welcome, or welcome back: let the whatever unfolds commence. I’ll be back on Monday with a first, hopefully not a last, post.

PS: The ever present PS. The title is benignly borrowed from Thomas Hardy. It feels appropriate, simply as an exercise in word placement.

This post was originally published in 2014.

When I was at school I learned French. In fact I began learning at the aged eight in Mrs Noble’s class. Mrs Noble liked me, having despised my older brother (the loathing was mutual). Given that I generally hated my brother (also mutual and absolutely compulsory at the ages we were), I loved Mrs Noble, which might have been why she liked me. Life is like that. We tend to like those that love us. Unless they are insane stalkers.  But that really is another story.

I adored the sounds of the words and I enjoyed learning. At secondary school I was, to be fair, generally mediocre at the grammar and indeed only actually began to make friends with conjugating after moving here in September last year. But I perfected my accent and frankly I was waiting for the call to star in the remake of ‘Les Enfants de Paradis’, France’s 1943 answer to ‘Gone With The Wind’. I listened to Jane Birkin breathing her way through Je T’aime Moi Non Plus and wanted to be her.

Adulthood and a cheese business that took me back and forth to Paris to the gastronomic chaos that is Rungis Market.  Ad hoc travels to Provence, Normandy, The Auvergne in search of the perfect morceau to bear triumphantly back to Berkshire in the overstuffed boot of our car and present to our customers who would sigh in ecstasy and run home to devour their new best friend with gusto and self-congratulatory glee that they had found this ‘maaaarvlus little place’ which sold all things French-Cheese without their having to bother at all with la manche.

During all this time, I listened French. I loved the sound. Compare the way that airport is said in English – two clipped syllables uttered in a reasoned monotone – with the same word in French. L’aeroport. The aer has the lightness of a soufflé and that for me is French. That for me defines what I adore about the language. Of course regionally and even more microscopically the way words are pronounced, the way sentences are constructed, varies. Standard French, the same as BBC English is not the standard at all. My radio station of choice when out in my car and indeed in my home, now that I have discovered the joys of listening on-line to the wireless, is RBA 104.4 Bort les Orgues. The main reason for my slavish devotion is the woman I know as ‘Over Enunciating Announcer Lady’. She is bliss. When she does her petits annonces I am captivated by her emphasis. ‘PerDU, un beagLE tricoloooooR a Bort les OrgUH’ or even more deliciously the moment when behind the wheel shortly before Christmas I heard her utter ‘Soob Millie Mettre aRAY ….. a Champs sur TarentaiNUH’ and realized it was a shout out for The Husband with Two Brains’ presentation on trous noirs (Black Holes) and his observatory in Hawaii. Her fabulous iteration gilds my days and she has unwittingly helped my French from stuttering to fluttering over the last six months.

That moment driving to Lyon in April when I realized the strange sensation I was experiencing was seeing Spring burst forth to greet me with its bumptious greens and yellows and pinks and whites and mauves in great swathes before my eyes is replicated in my sudden ability to assimilate and respond to a barrage of French with relative ease. But even in areas with harsher tones the words have elegance to me. Somehow Tortue sounds so much more evocative than Tortoise particularly if you can perfect that mysterious swallowed ‘r’ that French babies absorb by osmosis in order to bewitch dull English girls like me later in life.

I have lived in Italy and speak decent Italian, I learned Russian for six years at school but for me French is candied grace and refinement. If it were a scent it would be captured in a bottle made of a glass so fragile that you would think it was a bubble. Even in Cantal where we live which forms part of the Auvergne region (now wed to Rhône-Alpes as one of the super-regions created during the panda-like François Hollande’s administration and where the accent is renowned as being the hardest to understand in France.  Even for native French speakers.  Say Grenoble. Gren. Oble. Now say it with a French accent (it is after all French). Can you hear the chicly swallowed G? The way the ble whispers away at the end? That’s French. I speak it comme une vache espagnole but I hear it fluently. And it is music in my ears.

PS: My title is taken from a song by the brilliant Tracy Chapman. She was Talkin’ Bout a Revolution – something else the French do rather well ….

It should be noted that this piece was originally written for a writing competition … it didn’t make the cut but I rather felt it worthy of a place here nonetheless …. you are free to agree or disagree or remain Swiss and neutral.  And the photographs of mountains?  For me learning the language is like walking in the mountains: sometimes the climbs seem endless and the struggle never ending, you feel you won’t ever reach the top, you feel the task impossible but when you turn the corner on the path and take stock of how far you have climbed and breath the air and survey that vista, the effort evaporates.  And  aside from that, I simply love them.

Wednesday.  Not wordless for me, I’m afraid.  Rather I thought I might devote Wednesday to Wanderings.  I thought about making it a day to share walks but decided that, being  somewhat discursive by nature, that I would inevitably stray from the path.  Wandering, on the other hand gives scope for excursions other than walks – a junket here, a jaunt there, a foray and a forage.  Much more pleasing to one as naturally meandering as I.

Words to accompany these expeditions may be many or may be few but I do promise lots of pictures which may or may not please the eye.  I’m of the little lauded ‘Myopic Point and Shoot School of Photography’ so be gentle … I don’t profess any excellence, simply enthusiasm.

Today’s little ramble was more than four years ago when I was first living here in Massachusetts.  We subsequently returned to France for eighteen months and I commenced my present life here two years ago.

Arriving anywhere in winter gives a naked narrative to the unfamiliar landscape.  Nothing is hidden, all is laid bare and it is a season I love for that reason.   Three things struck me immediately about this place:  the water, the light and the sheer volume of trees.  Fortunate since water, trees and light are three  abiding succours of my soul.

This set of pictures was taken in the Assabet Wildlife Reserve which is literally on our doorstep.  I share them with you for a flavour of what I mean by water, trees and light.  This triptych captivated me then and still does now.  In winter, they are particularly lovely to my eyes.  But in honesty, they are particularly lovely to my eyes in Spring, in Summer and in Autumn also.

Weak rays of sunshine burnish the trees and the water reflects them back at us.  One tree is seemingly suspended like a diving acrobat, refusing to succumb to the ground to rot and feed it’s still living compatriots.

Late afternoon light provides a satin lustre to the wetland and the sky silken above deepens as it lights the water beneath

Nature snoozes but never truly sleeps ….

The rosy gleam of the setting sun shimmering on a natural mirror

A long-legged lumber man silhouetted against his eternal landscape

PS: the unavoidable PS:  The title is a line from Emily Dickinson’s lovely ‘There’s a certain Slant of Light’.  Dickinson was from Massachusetts, born in Amherst, directly west of here.  She captures her place quite perfectly.

‘There’s a Certain Slant of Light’

Emily Dickinson

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I have decided that Tuesdays for the foreseeable will be devoted to Taste.  This will mostly be something edible, but some weeks it might be something beautiful.  Always with the caveat that taste is entirely subjective.  I do love cooking, I do love tinkering with interiors.  I have had a food shop in my chaotically careening life and I have had a house-rescuing business for the desperate to sell and needing a budget savvy person to help them turn their sows ear into a silk purse.  And right now, as seems to be a constant theme in my life, we are renovating our home.   Actually strictly speaking two houses – the one in France which will again take centre stage when I resume the Coup de Coeur series and the one we live in, here in Massachusetts.  Positively the potential for a frisson-making wave of excitement, no?

Whatever it is you can be sure it will eventually form an eclectic whole because I do not have a set taste either in food or in surroundings.  I am influenced by many cultures and by many experiences.  But there is one absolute.  Life  forced me to be frugal for a very long time and I am fortunate for it.  The habits are ingrained and I am the better for it.  So the food we make is not extravagant.   I say we, because some of the delights I intend to entice you with are the work of HB² himself.

I have long expounded the good sense in eating food that is reared or grown as close to the ground I walk on as possible.  I recently discovered when strolling back to my husband’s office after lunch with a table full of boffins and mentioned my theory to one of them, that I am defined as a locavore.  I had no idea.  I guess everything has a label in this hashtag day and age.  Perfect I am not and here and now I do my best to adhere to my principles but I must admit that I do buy things that have been flown or trucked a pretty substantial distance to tickle my palate.  When we eventually settle into retirement and a forever home, we intend to grow as much as we can, raise chickens and ducks and geese for their eggs and possibly sheep and goats for their milk so we can make cheese.  HB² will have some vines and we will make some wine.  For this reason we have to survive several years …. vines are not viable for a minimum of three years and most wine-makers will tell you that white varieties need five years and the reds seven.  And a pig.  The Brains thinks I am joking but there will be a pig.  And that pig will never be eaten.  Actually, when he was newly courting me and met my eldest daughter for the first time, she said to him ‘if you want to win mummy, forget diamonds and flowers.  Get her a pig’.  She was deadly serious.  That’s the dream.  For the moment we are here and after a rather faltering start I am ready to embrace all that this place offers.  Which is much.

So there you have it.  Let the feast commence.  Next week … for now I need a lie down after this flurry of activity.  And tomorrow, there’s even more!!

PS, the essential PS:  The title is from Ricky Martin’s 1999 hit ‘Livin’ The Vida Loca’ which is an appalling attempt to link to my discovery that I identify as a locavore.  Dreadful, no?

Here’s the man himself enthusiastically recanting the story of the devil-red lipped temptress who who forcibly enticed him to ‘live the crazy life’ which is the correct translation of the title.  Absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the script.  Poetic licence, please.

At this moment, we are urged to get outside and walk as we self-isolate ourselves to flatten the virus curve in this deeply troubling and anxious reality we are all, together, living through.  I am fortunate because I need no encouragement.  Daily I am out with the dogs in tow or, more accurately towed by the dogs and now that HB2 is confined to barracks with me, he comes too.  Some days we split up and take a pair of dogs each, some days we are a motley sextet.  And the day I am about to share with you was a whole troupe day.

It was Saturday and at weekends our often habit is to drive to one of our neighbouring towns where there is an excellent field complete with skating pond which is, of course, merely pond at non-frozen times of year.  Skating on ponds is a feature of life here.  It is not one I will be joining in with at any point forward except to watch and admire.  Sliding sports and I don’t gel well.  I am somewhat Bambi-like of limb and I blame my 6′ frame and attendant high centre of gravity for my decided lack of balance and grace.  The fact that my neighbour is taller than me by  a margin and skis with perfect ease and elegance is something I try not to be bitter about.  That and her fabulous Titian curls.  Enough already.  We don’t harbour jealousy in this house.

Beyond the field is a large wooded hill.  In this area we are rich in conservation land.  This is one such place.  And it is a dog-walkers delight.  The first time we went, at the recommendation of one of The Brains’ colleagues I was absolutely astonished.  There were at least twenty dogs frenziedly frolicking on the field and as I approached the pond I found at least twenty more submerged but for their heads and rudder tails all conjoined by a collective bliss etched on their various furry faces.  We try and go once or twice a week for socialisation purposes.  The dogs, you understand.  Us, not so much though it can be pleasant to chat with familiar and unfamiliar folks about such contentious issues as what anti-tic treatment you favour, where to get the best and warmest canine coats to combat brutal New England winters, whether dogs really are smarter than humans and, generally confided in a whisper this one and received with a  unified torrent of relief, how to tackle poo(p) eating. Thus, we pass most early Saturday and Sunday mornings.  Of course, right now, we are observing our social distance and people are not standing in a friendly knot but rather spread out and using sign language and friendly smiles around the field.  When we look back at this moment, we will laugh.  We really will.

We turned off the road into the carpark at 8:30 prompt.  There was a rather badly parked car which caused The Brains to have to swing wider than usual and utter an attendant pithy remark about the basic inability of people to display good sense, good manners or any ability to drive a car.  I zoned the remark out and gave the most cursory of glances at the car and it’s driver sitting studying something in his lap.  We parked, passed the nice man who gives up so much of his free time as part of the town conservation group to tending the area surrounding the field, let the dogs run on the field a while, walked past the pond and respected our social distance passing three different ladies on their way home after walking their own dogs.  We took a turn round the woods – this takes about forty minutes.  We could do a longer three mile jaunt but our dogs are not yet to be trusted and the long loop passes quite close to a road and several people’s back-gardens.  Having lost them to an enticing barbecue early last summer we took a wise I feel, decision to wait a while before trying that circuit again off leash. And off leash is so much more fun for the rumbustious pooch-clan we nurture.  Back at the field the dogs ran into the pond and swiftly out again …. it’s March and I can attest to the fact that water is at its coldest at this time of year having stress tested the theory some years ago by falling out of my sculling boat first in early January and then in late March.  Neither was what could be described as a toasty experience but the later dunking took literally a whole day to get warm from afterwards.  Well exercised, dogs were then leashed and walked somewhat serenely back to the waiting car.

As we drove towards the exit, HB2 exclaimed ‘that car’s still there’.  He also uttered a mild expletive but I will draw a discreet veil over it.  He then remarked that the brake lights were on, indicating that the car was running.  Which seemed odd.  I asked him to drive past it very slowly, a creeping and not at all welcome sensation beginning to manifest at the base of our collective spines.  We did and I looked hard at the driver.  His eyes half closed, mouth slightly open he looked as though he was examining a map.  Eerily he had not moved.  His complexion was what caught my full attention and the kilter of that semi-open mouth.  It reminded me of my father the day he died.  Into the road and I asked to turn back and look again.  We did – me with rubberneck fully extended from the passenger seat.  The disquiet crept ever more harshly into a consciousness that something really did not look, nor feel remotely as it should.  A turn round the carpark and we drew up behind the car.

What follows I have replayed over and over and over again til my brain has wrung out.  I know I will never forget it.  HB2 approached the car on foot and spoke through the open window.  And then he turned to me and mouthed ‘I think he’s dead’.  I was out of the car and across the fortuitously placed right next door Fire Station forecourt with the speed, if not grace of a pursued gazelle.  I rang the bell, the duty officer appeared and I gave him my best and most succinct account of the fact that there was a car with a man aboard who we believed to be dead.   Longer story short, the first responders were there in seconds (they are conveniently right next door, remember), the police followed.  The man was taken from his car.  Attempts were made to resuscitate him.  The two dogs sitting in the backseat remained still and were pathetically calm.  They knew.  Knew their master had passed.  The policewoman who took our details and briefest of statements was despatched to an address to speak to his wife.  We remained subdued and I suppose shocked for the rest of the day.

You see, here we all are rightly gripped by the frightening developments all around the world as COVID19 cuts an indiscriminate and lethal swathe through populations and we forget, or at least I know I had forgotten that death being a part of life is happening all around us in the exact same way as it always has.  The night before, Massachusetts, the state I live in, had reported it’s first death from COVID19.  A man of 87 years old with previous serious health issues.  A reporter stood outside his home, interviewed neighbours (he was lovely man, a Navy Veteran) and we all felt sad and our thoughts (and for some, prayers) went out to his family and loved ones.  This man, who I believe, but must wait until autopsy results are released to know, must have suffered an aneurysm, had a stroke or a heart attack as he pressed the brake pedal approaching the junction with the road.  He died the most unassuming of deaths.  And he sat in his car as people drove past and walked past and tut-tutted because he was stopped in an awkward place for at least an hour and I believe probably an hour and a half.  This was an older gentleman but not ancient, who probably thought it wise to take the dogs out early rather than risk meeting too many people at this time when we are told to keep contact to a minimum.  I thought of his wife, who presumably thought he would be back with their dogs soon.   Maybe she was making breakfast.  Maybe she was tut-tutting that he was taking his time and then …. then, a police officer carrying the worst of news to her doorstep.  And I thought of the policewoman and all the other officers the world over who have to break tragic news to people, to strangers.  To witness and contain and comfort the rawest moments of shock and grief.  I thought of the dogs.  Sitting patient, loyal. Sentinels guarding their master.  They knew.  Dogs do.  Their dignity would shame most of us.  Death is a part of life.  This man died the quietest of deaths.  There will be no news story, no reporter urging us to send our thoughts and prayers.  He was just an older gentleman who died.  As we all will.  My thoughts have been with his wife and his family whom I shall never meet.  Their grief is just the same as the family of the first man to succumb to COVID19 in Massachusetts.  The experience has left me a little altered.  I suppose finding a deceased body on a routine dog walk is bound to do that.  In writing this piece, I honour his life.  I will never forget him though I believe I only ever passed the time of day with him.  It was his car I recognised as familiar, not his face.  And his dogs.  Rest well, good sir.  Find the place to nestle in the hearts of those that loved you and ease their pain over time as they learn to recognise that you are ever there, residing in that safe place inside them.

PS:  As ever, a PS:  The title is from Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Good Husband’ ‘to expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect’.  It seems to me that none of us expected what has gripped the world we call ours and is running rampant and amuck amongst us wherever on the planet we live.  Perhaps we should learn from this that we are not as advanced nor evolved as we pertain to be.  And perhaps at the end of this, we might learn to be more compassionate, kinder, more decent and tolerant.  And thus evolved, we might grace ourselves as having modernised our intellect a tiny bit for the experience.  Stay safe, stay well, stay out of harms way and remember that eventually, for one reason or another, death will be part of our lives as surely as this virus will touch all our lives before it is done.

And for the sake of a little levity, here is Helen Shapiro ‘Walking Back to Happiness’ ….

Mondays therefore, henceforth and for the next while become the terrain of my motley mutts.  Dog Days if you will.  In due course, they may be allowed to write their own posts but in the interests of some propriety, I will take the lead and write each of their stories over the coming weeks.

Today is simply a little background to how on earth we managed to increase the poundage of our household canines by a factor of almost twenty.  The poundage is the result of three newbies, not more, so I guess one might be credited with a tiny bit of sanity in the mayhem.  Or not.  Your choice on that one ….

The story starts in the summer of 2018.  Our son was staying with us prior to moving to a new flat.  He asked if we minded if he got a puppy.  He wanted the companionship when living on his own and we readily agreed.  Emilia is a cattle-dog cross who was found wandering in Oklahoma City.  She duly arrived, aged about 3 months and The Bean swooned.  This was astonishing.  We had thought she would be reluctant to welcome another dog but since it was temporary I, in the driving seat being home all day, had been happy to roll with the punches.  What a glistening silver lining that there was no antipathy and not even a brush of the boxing glove to contend with.

The love blossomed for two months and then it was time for son and pup to move to their new home.  We waved them off and settled back to being just we three.  The Bean descended into somewhat of a malaise.  She clearly missed Emilia.  It was tragic.  She moped around pathetically and seemed to be a sleep-walking version of her former spry self.  What to do?  Never one to shirk from more dogs I set about persuading HB² that this was really and truly the moment to adopt a dog.  He ignored me awhile, conceded that resistance was futile and acquiesced graciously.  I smiled serenely.

I did copious reading devouring books and articles and decided that The Bean should have a young companion, a maximum of a year old, and one that was no more than three times her weight thus no more than 20-22lb.  A male would be better since bitch fights are always ugly in any context and it seems that pairing opposite sexes works better.

Here in Massachusetts we have very little issue with dogs being ill-treated or rendered homeless.  Which is not to say none but relatively it is not a problem.  Therefore, the majority of shelter dogs come up from Southern States.  Sometimes this is because of inherent problems, sometimes it is because of natural disasters.  But there is a plentiful supply.  The first dog we applied for turned out to be one that would be put on a transport and sent to a collection point with numbers of other dogs.  It’s a bit like a blind date crossed with a lottery.  You arrive at the given time and the driver calls out your name and you meet your dog.  No sending it back.   You’re on your own.  We were not confident that this would work not least because The Bean would have no chance to meet her potential housemate before being required to budge up and share her digs. We slid down the snake and went back to square one.  Rather heavy hearted because Wilma did look like a lovely Beagle though older than we had ideally wanted.  Next we turned to one of the local shelters.  Now, in fairness, our timing was off.  I was about to travel to Europe for ten days and The Brains was joining me for five in France.  Naiveté is a speciality of mine and it didn’t occur to me that if we offered to pay for a dog and it’s keep that it would be a problem to keep it at the shelter til we got home.  The shelter were not impressed when I emailed our delight with a brother and sister called Alexander and Anjelica and said we would take both.  I’m not renowned for being able to make decisions between one thing and another.  For this reason I am always last to make my order in a restaurant – I dither back and forth and eventually am forced by the collective irritation of whomever I am dining with and the person taking the order and the choice will be made by whichever point of the eeny-meeny I am at at that precise moment.  This in part explains why we opted for both not one or the other.  That and the site of them so clearly a pair of attached siblings.  Anyhow, I got rather a brusque rebuff from the manager and got on the plane to London heavy of heart.  I checked their website.  One of them had been adopted.  I remain convinced they should have gone together – they were so bonded.  I cried quietly in my seat as I flew further and further away.  The dogs, incidentally were estimated at a weight of 40lb each when grown.  So each double what I had sensibly understood the maximum optimal weight for a Bean companion should be.

We returned to the US and I started the hunt again.  Weeks past and I became a woman obsessed.  By then, based on the two we had found, we had decided that it would be better for The Bean if we got two youngsters so that they could occupy each other when she was feeling her age and a little less affable.  The Bean, you see, may look cute and harmless but many is the dog and human who have fallen foul of her less than even temperament.  Bad hair days are unpredictable in world of Bean and we felt she would do better not having the pressure of always being spruce and polished.   I must have looked at and enquired after twenty dogs but many were of the trapeze without a safety net variety coming straight to a carpark near you on a transport.  Others on closer inspection were not the right fit.  Maybe they were known to not be good with children for example.  We have five children and it is inevitable that there will be tiny pitter pattering feet along the way.

And then I struck gold.  A rather oversized crock of the gleaming stuff as it turned out.  I found two sisters aged five months old and we went to the shelter, a different shelter, to meet them.  Unfortunately they had been spayed that day and were not taking visitors but would we like to walk this one ….?   This one was a red coated fellow with the most pleading expression and it was clear that he had decided we were to be his family.   The following evening Red Boy met The Bean and duly bonded, we brought him home.  But what of the sisters.  Well – my husband pretends to be a badass but in fact is extremely soft and he whispered to me as I stood looking at their forlorn post operative forms on their little cots through the wire of their cages ‘we could take all three ….’

Most shelters would not have let us take two let alone three but we were interviewed, a stiff but fair interview. It felt a little as I imagine it might feel for a young man asking a father for the hand of his daughter in marriage.  I have owned multiple dogs all at once and most of the many dogs I have owned have been rescued.  That may have been a factor.  Whatever the reason, they said yes.   People might comment at this point that we have ‘sucker’ tattooed on our collective foreheads and that the shelter saw us coming but this is a highly professional place which has been a place of refuge and rehoming since 1961. We consider ourselves fortunate to have crossed their threshold and privileged to have been given the opportunity to adopt three needy souls.  So the morning after we took The Boy home, we went back with Boy and Bean for the entire potential quartet to meet.  It was deemed a success and paperwork duly done, we squoozed into our Mini Cooper and took our new tribe home.  And the fun commenced but that is a story to be spun over coming Mondays.

PS, the ever present PS:  The title is taken from ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’, Gail Honeyman’s brilliant debut novel.  Eleanor is talking about her love of ‘Jane Eyre’ and gives special praise to Pilot, Mr Rochester’s faithful dog, remarking ‘you can’t have too much dog in a book’ – I am happy to paraphrase that as ‘you can’t have too much dog in a life.

Exactly two years ago, this very day, I drove away from Grenoble, knowing that I would be flying to the US of almighty A to settle for the foreseeable future with my Husband (he of the lauded, virtually vaunted by me, two brains).  It was what I had fervently wished for, wished with all my aching heart and now it was becoming a reality.  But niggling my soaring spirits, was a looming disquiet caused by a spate of blogging friends receiving a poisonous mail from a woman who I could, but will choose not to, unmask.  Suffice to say that her actions  quite literally unhinged me over the course of the following months and although I tried to write, tried to whistle while I worked out my new and longed-for life, increasingly paranoia crept over me, self-doubt and self-loathing wrapped me as a strait-jacket and I shrivelled under the resultant and suffocating weight of what felt like the heftiest, most immovable shroud.

There were other factors – that ocean and the time difference conspire to make one feel very far away; this place is far more foreign to me than France ever was; loneliness a familiar but never welcome guest. But the gaping abyss into which I stared and felt helpless to tackle, was caused by a malicious woman whom I have never met. I am a forgiving soul.  This made it harder.  I choose to live by the words ‘Primum non Nocere’ or ‘first, do no harm’ and I don’t understand enmity.  Many would, indeed have and probably still do, call me naive.  I prefer it that way.  I prefer to believe in the good, in the positive, in the decent, in the lovely.  But it does mean that when caught unawares by the actions of a spiteful and vindictive person, I was entirely ill-equipped to deal with it.  I know who you are.

But I, being the richest poor girl on the block am fortunate that I had the unerring and may I say remarkable love of a good man to support me as I first lay thrashing at the bottom of, and then climbed slowly out of, often slipping back and disturbing yet more toxic shale, the mineshaft I had tumbled into; that I found a wonderful and talented psychoanalyst to guide me through what turned out to be a mire of influences from the very beginnings of my tenure on this earth, the bevvy of issues, unresolved and packed in trunks to languish under the stairs, which every so often lurched out and knocked me sideways, the noxious flotsam and pernicious jetsam from my own clumsy attempts at living a decent life and a need to find the Me clamouring to breath the clean fresh air of a guilt free existence and to love Me so that I could, in turn, be loveable.  It turned out that I had sorely neglected Little Miss Me, Me, Me and it was time to give her a spit and polish, a hug and a caress and to reassure her that I can be proud of who she is.  That bit is a struggle but I repeat my mantra daily.  Oh.  And dogs.  In a moment of what most would call low-level insanity, we adopted three dogs to join The ineffable Bean on the same weekend about eighteen months ago.  I believe and The Bean has proved more than once in her life, that dogs are the greatest therapy to humans and, the need being great, the cure surely had to be plentiful.  We don’t profess to be sensible, we understand it might be construed as excessive to increase the poundage of a canine entourage from 7.5lb to nearly 150lb overnight.  But we aren’t hurting a soul and we have saved three harmless souls from a fate far worse than having to reside with us in perpetuity.

Now that I have dealt with it all, I am comfortable that, I am, as they say here, all set. Reset if you will. And what I emphatically know is that in order to be the person I am, the content version of her, that I have to write again. I have to do what comes naturally to me – plague the world with nonsense. And you, you if you choose to, can read it and your opinion will be valued, whatever it is.

Join me as I start spinning stories once more. I’m rather excited. I just couldn’t bring myself to enter the room, blinking wildly, mane on end like a wholly deranged, if recovering, nag. Well I could, but it didn’t seem decorous and I might as well at least pretend for a tiny while that I can be teeny bit refined.

PS. Because there must always be a PS: The title is taken from Shakespeare. Shylock to Antonio, striking his bargain as he lends him needed funds in his desire to win the hand of Portia. The woman I speak of hurt me mightily. I am not vengeful but a pound of flesh taken without the spillage of a drop of blood appeals. Pens and swords, eh?

It’s not easy being Bean. My job is to be faithful, loyal and unerringly stoic which skills I have in amazing quantities. But despite my dazzling talent, I don’t get any say in where I will be at any time. They discuss and debate and I doggedly jog alongside them. This goes for walks, runs and hikes and for bigger journeys that require cars or trains or planes.

When They are packing for one of these journeys I get quite anxious and I sit sentinel in my basket beadily scanning for signs that the car door may open whence I stealthily nip in and refuse to move. I worry, you see, that in their grandeose plans, they may entirely and completely forget me.

I am ten human years old. When I was half this age, She took me repeatedly to that house where the person sticks spikes in my neck and pokes me and peers in my ears and my eyes and then writes things with a pen-stick and after three times She was happy because the spiking person gave her a book with my name in it called a ‘Pet Passing Port’. This book gets taken with us every time we travel. When we travel to see my friends in the old country I have to have a filthy tasting pill forced down my throat through my resolutely clamped jaw.  This is the foul tablet which the French man who has also been known to spike my scruff from time to time claims is ‘un petit bon-bon Français’. That is a despicable lie. It is not a sweetie, it is no sort of candy.   It is vile and it is designed to make my tummy feel very delicate and undulous.  They say it empties me of worms but since I don’t have any wrigglers anywhere on or in my person it is a worthless cruelty. More recently, after we moved our place to Grenoble I got a better spiking doctor who gives me a meat flavored treat which they say does the same thing. I like the doctor who gives me meats.  I do not like the one who tells lies and pushes the wretched pill down my throat with gigantic  tweezers the size of Edward Scissorhands’ knife-fingers. He needs to be avoided which I did try to show Her whenever we went to his house. I would go on sit down strike but She would act as though She didn’t understand and would pick me up and carry me in. This is the worst think about being of petite and portable proportions.  I will give you his address if you contact me discretely.  You really do need this information so that you can be sure to avoid him. She thought he was nice, by the way, but He even had the temerity to jest that it is amusing and ironic that She, an English woman, has to pay him, a Frenchman, many euros to allow me, an English dog, back into my own country. He clearly doesn’t understand that I speak very good French and don’t really even remember living in that England, though I very much like to visit, and that I find it offensive that he dares make light of this dastardly situation. It is not at all ironic it is just undignified and rather rude. Come the glorious day when my true worth is recognized he will regret his facetiousness. This is my pledge.

Since I got my passing port I have travelled to France, Switzerland, Germany and the USA. Plus visits back to the England place.  I have driven many thousands of miles by car (about 90,000 at the last count which is around 145,000 km) and I have taken very fast trains. But the bit that humans are most interested in is that I do flying. Because I am sensibly svelte and compact in size, I am allowed to fly in the cabin with Them. I have to go in a bag which is rather a slight and I have to be weighed in the bag to make sure that our combined weight is acceptable.  Then I am welcomed by the nice food trolley people and I am stowed under the seat in front of Her. The first time I flyed was from Clermont Ferrand to Paris and then from Paris to Boston. When we got to Boston they let me out of the bag and I pooed on His foot. Since then they have cruelly deprived me of food until we land safely and are through all the controls where the humans look at my passing port and ask if I have brought food with us.  I don’t – I eat local food wherever I am.  Truthfully, I mainly just like to eat, and I am happiest with anything that falls from the table when They are eating but I will make do with what they call ‘dog food’ if forced – how silly is that … all food is dog food.  Obviously.  I like restaurants for this reason. I find that if shimmy into my most appealing and cute pose, people ask if they can pet me and then, when they are at their most vulnerable, I take my  limpid eyes up to Mach 3-charming and they ask if they can give me a tidbit. This is a skill I advise all dogs to learn well. It is truly life-enhancing.

He says that I kept Her afloat during the 5 years after they were married that we were not all together most of the time. I took my role as Her fierce protector seriously and it was quite tiring and I was always happy when He was with us. Now we can all be together and I can relax. Life is good in this new place. It is called Boston and in Boston they are very keen on beans.   She says people can learn a lot from my attitude which is really the attitude of all dogs that are fortunate to have humans of their own. She says that being simple and uncomplicated and enjoying the moment and loving where you are even if it isn’t the place you thought you wanted to be in, is a good way to live a life. She says that being fortunate is not counted in gold coins or sunshine but in the warmth you feel in your heart. I think she sometimes speaks some sense. Particularly when she says its supper time …..

PS: I am writing this from one of my favourite places in the wide, wide world. My humans are away from home for a week so they put me in my kennels which I really love. It is also the house of the local spiking man but he is one of the good spiking men. I love him and all the others in this house SO much that when we came to see him just after we arrived to make sure I was tickety-boo, I launched myself off her knee and did a full barrel-roll in the air which would have been of perfectly Cirque du Soleil standard had I not mildly misjudged my elevation and grounded with my back. I’m pretty sure I got away with the duff landing because Doctor Spiker was clearly very impressed and said it is not normally a problem he encounters that a dog is excited to be at this place. But I do love them. Because they are kind to me, I do love them. The law of the dog is quite simple, you see … all we need is love and we will absorb it and process it and give it back at a ratio that fantastically exceeds the original.

À bientôt

The Bean 

And your bonus is Mr Johnny Cash. He is singing a song that Her Daddy loved and I have used it as my title for this piece of unabashed brilliance because I know it will make her smile.  I hope you will too.  I wonder if any of you can sing every single word without tripping up …..

A note from the Editor in Chief (that’s me, Osyth) …. I have decided to join the Fandango One Word Challenge from time to time because I think initiatives that aim to fill the void left by the WordPress decision to halt their challenges should be supported.  The absolute essence of this post is that a simple outlook is generally helpful, I am submitting it to the cauldron of other entries here    #FOWC

I married my beloved HB² not quite five years ago in our village in the Cantal and set about working towards the next phase of my life which was to be a life in Massachusetts because that is where he is based.  Simple.  Except that the process of getting Lawful Permanent Residency is not simple.  And if you stick with me, you will learn that simple as I am, if there is a way to eek some drama and comedy out of a process or a situation, I am truly and simply your leading girl.

Whilst we waited, I settled in France.  It was the sensible thing to do.  We had bought a little house there (these days named, at least in my head, la Maison Catastrophe) and it made sense for me to give up my corporate London career with attendant regulated holidays and be in a place we love, and free to travel and be with His Brainship as frequently as possible.  We waited and we waited and we waited.  The process was as appealing as digging ones own eyeballs out with a spoon and as swift as paddling a canoe upstream with that same piece of cutlery.  Such is life.  Rules are rules and resisting them is both foolish and ultimately futile.  We waited.  We occasionally uncovered evidence that the great beast that is this bureaucratic process actually did have a pulse and it would lurch into life and ask a question or demand information before lapsing back into its apparently dorment state once more.  And we did as we were asked and always with a smile and a twirl.  And between smiles and twirls, we waited.

During this time, I nested and rooted and felt at home.  In France.  In 2016 the kindly beast allowed me a special visa so that I could spend the year in the USA but travel in and out freely.  I had a lovely time and I felt quite homely .  When I left in December I felt rather sad.  Back in France I ingrained and entrenched some more and I began to assume that the permission to enter the United States and live there as a ‘Lawful Permanent Resident’ (Green Card holder as it is known in the vernacular) would never arrive.  I qualified as an English Teacher.  My French improved incrementally and raised itself far above it’s previous Spanish Cow default, for living in a city (Grenoble) rather than in the middle of truly no-whereland (Cantal) with far more opportunity to interact beyond the basics of shopping and passing the time of day with the Monsieur le Maire and the old lady opposite and I felt entirely and completely settled and content that I could count down the days to my husband’s retirement and that all shall be jolly and well in the meantime.

The phone call came at 3 a.m my time and a voice uttered ‘areyousittingdown’ to which I wittily, it must be said, responded that I was lying down since it was the middle of the night.  If I had been sitting I would have fallen off my chair.  As it was the bed was capacious enough to prevent me from rolling onto the floor.  That pesky Juice Man had pressed the green light and all systems were go for the last lap to the finish line.  That it was a lumpy bumpy descent I will write of another time but the fact is that I sat for days feeling bewildered.  Of course I was thrilled that finally I would be able to live with my love and be what we intended when we married …. to.geth.er.  But all of a sudden I was facing leaving France.  And that, as one of the positive batalion of my friends named Philippe is sweetly fond of saying ‘Urt me in ze ‘eart’. 

So for now I have left France.  I will be devoting Friday to France from now on ‘FrenchFriday’ if you will and bringing you the stories that have remained untold from my tenure there.

And to kick off my other series, ‘Melting–PotMonday’ which will bring your stories from this side of the pond, The Bean will guest-write the first instalment.  She has been quite disarmingly insistent that her version of events needs to be told and is highly excited at the opportunity to flex her pokey little paws on the keyboard.

To note is the fact that all the pictures in this post have featured before on my blog.  I am currently away from base and it proved a step too taxing for the hotel internet to allow me to upload new pictures from my iPhotos library

PS:  The title is from one of my favourite songs by one of my first and everlasting loves.  Marianne in the context of this article is the National symbol of the French Republic portraying a Goddess of Liberty and representing that liberty and reason which in the end is really what we all should strive for, n’est-ce pas?  So long Marianne, keep my place at the table, I’ll be back before too long.

And your bonus, with the added quite gaspingly delicious noisette that when I was at school, my enviably beautiful and absolutely aspirational classmate Sara Trill announced to those of us that affected intellectual by hanging out in the library that my father was the image of Mr Cohen himself – I took this as the highest praise by proxy (and let’s face facts, gauche girls like me had to grab the crumbs where they fell), and blushed decorously whilst purring internally for days.  Months actually.  Possibly my whole life through if I’m honest …..

And because this is a post about feeling forlorn about leaving a favourite, and because WordPress in their infinite wisdom have cancelled their weekly photo challenge making me and so many others a little wan and sad, and because their last challenge is ‘All-Time Favourites’ and I don’t have one, I will instead include this in the veritable feast of entries to be found here and bid one of the best things about WordPress adieu with a heavy heart.

PS:  The title is a line from a song I have sung gustily and quite possibly tunelessly since childhood: Froggie Went a Courtin‘.  Here as your bonus is Bruce Springsteen with my favourite of all favourite versions of the shenanagans of the amorous amphibian.  I sincerely hope this little croaker is armed with neither sword nor pistol.

By the by, I don’t know if this is a green frog or a bull frog – perhaps a herpetologist  could help me out ….