Other beasts at Kerbiriou

This shrew showed itself the first day we arrived, running across the path. Later I saw it trotting sedately down the outside steps towards the door to our room.

 It climbed up the wall and pottered along the windowsill, then investigated the groove in the frame where the outside shutter ran,

and began to climb up it - apologies for the out of focus picture, but it was the only one I was able to take before it slipped down again, not being able to get much purchase on the pvc of the frame.

I thought it must be ill to be so slow moving and careless, but I mentioned it to Paul, our host, and he was quite familiar with it, and we saw it several times more, it seemed quite healthy, just tame. Elfie was curious but not especially obsessive or predatory about it. One afternoon, we were sitting with the room door open, and it came wandering down the steps and ran along the terrace. 'Don't go in the bedroom' I said to it, and it went into the bedroom.

Tom followed it in, and I heard various noises and things being moved. I continued to drink my wine, deciding this was a moment when I would abnegate responsibility for a mildly tricky situation, even though I didn't particularly want to find it on my pillow later or have to take its corpse out of Elfie's mouth in the middle of the night. After a few minutes Tom came out with his hand clenched as though holding something. 

'Have you got it?'

'I don't know yet.'

In fact he was holding his sleeve end close to his wrist; he carefully peeled off his jacket and turned the sleeve inside out, and the shrew tumbled harmlessly out and pottered off into the grass. It had made the tour of the room then gone into the bathroom, he had tried to catch it in a carrier bag but it had run up his sleeve instead.

When we were kids, we used to take our two cats on family caravan holidays. When we arrived they tended to disappear for a day and then find their way back, even on quite crowded sites, then keep to a very regular schedule of exploring and hunting all day and coming back at night. Once we had to move the 'van because there had been a flood in the site which was some kind of old quarry. Ginger came back at his allotted supper time and sat in the middle of a large puddle mewling pitifully, we were only a few dozen yards away and kept calling him, but he had programmed it into his brain that that was the spot to meet us, and we had to go over and fetch him so he could readjust his settings. They weren't great huntng cats normally, but in holiday mode they would bring back all kinds of small furred game for our inspection; once a vole caught in Herefordshire travelled many miles in the caravan unbeknownst to us and was released in mid-Wales, we wondered if it would encounter linguistic difficulties. Shrews were a favourite to be brought home to us, trembling and traumatised but still alive, since, it seems, they don't taste nice. Which may account for this one being unmolested by Kerbiriou's resident cat.

He's lived there all the time we've been going, six years now. I've photographed him before. Some kind of Russian blue type, friendly enough but always on his terms of course, and very confident and assertive. One night quite late, Elfie was having her last perambulation of the day and we encountered him sauntering very nonchalantly down the middle of the road. Before anyone knew what was happening they were nose to nose, and the cat was totally non-fazed, spending several moments eyeballing her coolly before going on his way without batting an eyelid. Elfie seemed simply astonished and non-plussed, though she did just mutter quick snap-snap with her jaws as he left. Cats are a problem area with her, she tends to freeze and stalk when she sees one, which is the worst reaction a dog can have to a cat, they say. More exposure to the Kerbiriou cat might sort her out a bit. Here he is as Lord of All He Surveys on the barn roof,

which is really very high:

Lastly, another formidable boss creature. The last house in the lane has this fellow as a lawn mower:

He's a Ouessant ram. Ouessant is Ushant in English, as in 'from Ushant to Scillies is thirty-five leagues'. For sheep enthusiasts, this is a most interesting breed, considered probably one of the most direct descendants of the earliest domesticated sheep breeds, kept pure and unmodified over millennia in such a westerly outpost. There are enthusiasts for keeping them and spinning their wool, but those who do so admit their fleeces to be often short, rough and brittle. I seem to remember hearing that some shipwrecked Spanish sheep introduced a better strain for wool, and that one of the clothes labels who make all the cliché stripey Breton sweaters and such like that Parisians and other tourists take home from their holidays had bought up all the viable wool from the island's flock, but I'm not sure if either of these things is true.

When I asked about this one, Paul answered ruefully that he was a very bad character indeed, and we should look out for him. But he was rather handsome, I thought.

Elfie at Kerbiriou

... where she had a really rather marvellous time, as did we. We took endless walks, around the Kernéléhen peninsular, 

on paths and lanes some of which I'd not discovered before,

and on the rough stony beaches, getting her first taste of the sea, I think,

which often made her rather thirsty:

She lounged in the garden when it was sunny, watched out for the local wildlife and helped Tom out with his sudoku,

and showed herself to be the Angel-Under-the-Table in every restaurant and bar we went to, lying down calmly inside or out, with the minimum of fidgeting or groaking.

As usual she was often admired; Yvette at Kerbiriou asked if we had gone to Callac to get her, which is where all the best épagneuls bretons* come from, it seems, there is even a museum about them there. 

We also very much enjoyed being in a place where people walk and socialise their dogs rather more than they do round here - although the day before we left I had met up with Iso and Princeling at the lake in Lamballe, which is quite a busy, sociable place of a Sunday afternoon; the lad, who is now eight, took her lead for long stretches and was very sensible, and it was almost like giving her total freedom, since he was happy to run back and forth and round trees and into long grass after her, which gave his mother and me the opportunity to natter while boy and dog entertained each other. But during our trip away I think we met more dogs and dog owners than in all the time we've had her, all of them friendly and responsible, whether on the long promenade walk at le Dourduff, or the cliff paths round the peninsular, or pavement walking in Morlaix, and it was rather fun. 

Then, when we got home, there was a parcel waiting for us. G and A (Sidney, Milly and Peggy's humans), who, we have decided, are now appointed her god-parents, had sent her the most beautiful, elegant and luxurious, hand-made, soft, rolled-leather collar** in a gorgeous shade of tangeriney orange, which tones even more fetchingly with her coat colour than turquoise complements it, and is generally a far classier piece of doggy apparel than her nylon webbing one. They also included two matching ID discs with our name and phone numbers, one of which is on the collar, the other on her harness.

So she is surely the most wondrously caparisoned dog in all of Brittany, and will be even more admired than ever. She certainly seemed to enjoy modelling.

*in fact them more I look at stuff about pure-bred Brittanies, even French ones, the more I'm inclined to think she's not completely typical, may even have a bit of border collie in the mix somewhere, which Emmy the vet was inclined to think possible too.

** from Dogs and Horses, no less! 

Looking in

Poor neglected blog, nearly a month gone by, time was I used to tell you everything. Then this morning a so kind e-mail from a dear old friend expressing concern for my absence here, which has brought home to me what I knew, that it really is important to keep up this practice, albeit not necessarily with the same intensity as I once did, and to stay connected with the people with whom blogging is still a useful and comforting form of contact.

I don't really have any good excuses at all for not posting, I have been away a couple of times, a trip to Kerbiriou in late June (where the goat was, above), and a south England trip from which I only just returned on Sunday, catching up with family members - brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew, some of whom I've not seen for a very long while, fortuitously gathered from far-flung corners of the Earth, which was lovely*, so you might say I'd been a bit busy, but in truth these occasions would at one time have provided good reasons to blog, not kept me away from it. The other thing is I've an editing project for a print-on-demand book/magazine on hand for my brother which I'm taking far longer about than I ought to be. The kind of thing I like to think I'd have dashed off enthusiastically in a jiffy at one time, it's required the use of new and unfamiliar software, which by all accounts is still really at the beta stage (I believe that's the term for using the unsuspecting public as guinea pigs on an unfinished product), which, combined with the slowness of the bigger computer which I have to use, means I'm making far more of a meal of it than I should. If I were doing it for myself I'd probably have abandoned it by now, if I were doing it for a for work or some other formal commitment I'd have knuckled down and got it sorted, but as it is my brother is apologetic and appreciative and anxious not to put pressure on me, and I have allowed myself to slide into a kind of ineffective limbo about it, getting computer-shy (another invalid excuse for not blogging) and when I do come to it sidling off into idle and treacherous surfing and drifting day-dreaming on Pinterest and Ravelry (while also not keeping up my project notes or useful discussions I've entered into there either).

In fact though, I see now I am in a fairly recognisable kind of seasonal malaise; it's that kind of tipping-point time of year, flowering and fruiting and going to seed and drying out all at once and mixed together, the days dwindle perceptibly and weeds grow up around things and obscure the view of them, and clearing them seems like dusty, uninviting, pointless work; projects lie unfinished though I'm pulling out bits and pieces to embark on abortive new ones, scribbling and doodling and swatching and scratching half-heartedly at things which will mostly come to nothing and just result in more mess; distraction and displacement and lassitude hold sway.

And summer dreamed sadly for she thought all was ended
In her fullness of wealth that might not be amended

Nothing for it but to turn to, make a list (with the first thing on it being something you've already done, and can therefore cross off straight away, that's always a good one), bargain with myself for the dubious rewards of distraction, pick the peas and beans and sniff the flowers, and just DO IT!

However, before going away, and while sorting pictures for my brother's stuff, I did get as far as editing and uploading a fair number of pictures from the last month or so, here are a few:

Elderflowers. Rather than the rather laborious manufacture of heavy cordial involving large quantities of sugar, citric acid and days of standing, resulting in a product whose main aim in life seems to be to ferment dangerously, I used a much simpler recipe which involved boiling the flowers with plenty of lemons, much less sugar and smaller quantities of everything except the flowers themselves which yielded just one bottle of much lighter, fresher more stable liquid which is quite enough to give a taste of the season.

The remaining flowers and lemon I put to macerate in a Parfait jar with a bottle of vodka and one of sweet white wine, some sugar and a bag of last years white currants from the freezer by way of an experiment. White currants are rather eerily pretty things, though they still remind me a bit of frogspawn, which is quite pretty too in its own way.

A nice red nasturtium. Climbing annuals from seed doing well in the containers this year.

Finistère souvenirs:

The seaside at Carantec (where there was also a good market in the town with that rare thing in France, a really comprehensive spice stall):

A married couple were having their photos taken there, as is the vogue. It sometimes seems a bit strange, the spots they choose for this, as while they may be beautiful places in themselves, wedding dresses and suites seem rather incongruous within them. This couple had to negotiate the causeway with the seaweed and the old chaps going fishing, but all was done with good cheer.

Other sunsetty, seashorey moments in the same neck of the woods:

and rustic stuff too:

The goats are two still very young kids Paul at Kerbiriou bought for next to nothing when they were newborns from a more serious goat-raising enterprise than theirs, where even the females don't get to spend any time with their mothers, since the milk yield is the thing. They do however have a chance of life if someone like him will take them on and bottle raise them, which he did, so they are quite imprinted on and devoted to him and very affectionate and friendly with everyone. Every morning he'd bring a nanny goat or two down the road for milking, and the babies would trot alongside loose to get the special feed they're still having. They were quite mischievous and often skittered off, making winsome little caprioles and dashing off to eat the roses, Tom had to round them up a couple of times.

We came away this year with a big bag of very fresh green beans, a handful of home grown cucumbers and, special treasure, a fresh goat's cheese. With the rest of some cherry tomatoes from the market at Carentec, those we hadn't eaten like sweets, warm with the sun on them, as we were going around, and the last of the saladini and endives and some fresh oregano from the garden when we got back, and store cupboard olives, made an excellent Greek-style salad, being rather more like a good feta than a typical smelly French chèvre.

Also plenty of broad beans in the garden, these pink ones amuse me,

you can pretend to mistake them for your fingers, if you're silly,

They're usually more resistant to black fly than most varieties, but this year it's been a struggle. They go ordinary broad bean colour when you cook them.

And this was an oddity:

A light helicopter, sweeping back and forth quite low, one morning trailing this very long apparatus below it. I searched the internet for information in vain, but then spoke to a neighbour later who said he's seen it in the paper beforehand, and it was a radio-sonic device which was able to analyse the soil from above for minerals and such like. Most curious.

So, dear blog, apologies for my silence, but it's nice to talk to you again. I'll make sure to post more often ( and get round other people's too).

* apart from one of my rather too frequent attacks apparent food poisoning, the source of which was a complete mystery as I had eaten absolutely nothing that everyone else hadn't eaten, but which necessitated the total and violent expulsion from my body of all matter hitherto taken into it followed by a day lying around feeling as if my skin was on inside out, only to awake and emerge on the morning of my departure more or less as bright and chipper as if nothing had happened. I had to cry off a trip into London to meet yet another long-lost nephew and his new wife, but in fact the day of reconstitution passed surprisingly pleasantly (other than the skin-inside-out thing), since I got to hang out with my Aussie brother and sister-in-law and Zig the cat, reading, chatting a bit, not-really-watching tennis, dozing and finally enjoying a dainty little supper prepared by my brother. I've rather come to the conclusion that seeing and catching up with people consists far more of such moments than the planned events, exciting experiences and meaningful conversations, and they are often the more memorable.

Winter blues, and another Breton island added to the collection.

Greys more like. The kind of day where to say it grows dark early is almost pointless, it has scarcely grown light all day. The e-mails unanswered, lists unwritten, photos unscanned, all the projects unbegun never mind unfinished, hang over the day like the wet pall of cloud and mist and rain hangs over the day and the damp washing hangs round the house.  Blues would be welcome, in fact, and with that in mind, it's a moment to revisit the Ile de Batz.

It's about a quarter of an hour's boat trip from Roscoff, but most of that time is spent turning the boat around. We visited the island (pronounced 'Ile de Ba') back in September, we'd never been before, in spite of frequenting the mainland area frequently and knowing it well. It's about three km long and about one wide at its widest point.

It's popular with tourists, and probably a fairly desirable dormitory suburb of Roscoff, but it's a proper working community as well. They grow vegetables, most famously delicious new potatoes, but also pink onions and artichokes and other things, we saw a lot of little fields of bulb fennel. And there is fishing.

There are motorised vehicles, though tractors and mopeds probably outnumber cars.

There's a well-known light house and a semaphore station, and this rather fine lifeboat house,



which I think has an open day once a year (not the day we were there), but no souvenir charity shop.

This is the island's football pitch, home ground of Moles United, I think.

There's a ruined chapel,

where people play a bit and express themselves with rocks and pebbles, 

a lot of wild fennel, and a number of horses.

The building glimpsed through the dip in the photo above is the sailors' chapel on the headland at Roscoff, where the fishermen and onion sellers used to say their prayers and ask for blessings before they set out to sea.

We had a delicious lunch at the island's main hotel: a light flaky pastry filled with confit pink onions and pâté, and a dish of the small scallops called pétoncles, then we walked across to the other side of the island, where there are wide beaches of white sand, and very blue sea.

I love how, in these small western islands, whether here in Brittany or in Scotland, there is a landward side which is homely and busy and pragmatic, and a seaward side which is wild and open and dreaming.

The small white dash on the horizon is the ferry out of Roscoff, to Cork in Ireland or Plymouth in Devon.

It was a hot day; I had a long t-shirt on and there weren't many people about, so I stripped off trousers and paddled. Tom wasn't dressed or quite up for this, though he regretted it, and we had not towel or means of dusting off sand, and he minds sand in his socks and shoes more than I do. He went down to the water's edge and dipped his hands and arms in anyway.

We went back to the port, and had tea,

communed with the birdlife (these below are ringed plovers, not a great photo but I take these zoom shots for identification)

and took ourselves off, back across the water.