A Midsummer Day's Nightmare

Yesterday was midsummer's day. Exactly six years since we bought this house, and set the ball rolling down the slope of fate toward our present destiny. In the evening, as on our very first night here in 2002, the village celebrated the summer solstice with many hours of wine, food and very bad french music at the Salles des Fetes.

I didn't join in. Nor, I think, did our friend and neighbour Giles (whose family were new to the village at least 30 years ago) and Veronica (his Chilean wife - who arrived here this March). Outsiders all.

Although I wish to learn to speak French (the lessons are going quite well), and to understand the local culture sufficiently well to be able to get through each day without causing offence, I feel no desire to become a fully 'integrated' member of this small society. Indeed, I think it would not be possible. To be a real part of this village, you would have to have been born here, as would your parents and their parents before them.

However, if we can but do no harm, and make no enemies, I will be content. And whilst there are times when I miss the anonymity of the city, and crave the isolation of the hermit, I still feel lucky, and enormously grateful for the life we have here.

Since I last wrote, the weather has turned hot as a very hot thing - between 30 and 33 degrees for most of the day - and not surprisingly, the llamas have got very thirsty. Typically, this hot, dry spell has neatly coincided with Simon's trip to England, which means Poor Weedy Me has total responsibility for getting vast quantities of water up to the two fields, morning and evening.
Of course, my paranoia about possible llama deaths from heat stress makes me want to keep checking they are all alright, so I'd be visiting them at least twice a day anyway. At least until
a) I am convinced that they really can cope with this climate, or
b) I can't be bothered any more. (This heat breeds an awesome degree of lethargy).

My visits have to be early in the morning or late in the evening, as any time in between is just too damned hot (I would probably die of heat stress, let alone the llamas). Taking this morning's quota of 30 litres between the two fields, I discovered that the increased call on the water supply is not just because the llamas are very thirsty. In fact, they seem to have taken to attempting cold baths in the water buckets to cool themselves down. I caught Valentine, Ana and Pedro all sticking their feet and heads right in the water, and splashing about like naughty children in a nursery. No wonder the water gets muddy so quickly.

Since I have yet to pluck up the courage to drive the land rover round to the rough land (given my luck with technological equipment, I'd almost certainly damage something in my amateur attempts to use the various knobs and gears to go off-road), I have been carrying the water for The Walkers all the way from the road near the Breeders. To make myself keep going when my neck and arm muscles are screaming in pain, and biting insects are sticking to the sweat on my forehead, I pretend I'm a marine in training, and fanatasize about how fit and strong I will become. I draw the line at chanting marine-type songs as I march though, for fear of drawing unwelcome attention from the locals that I pass along the way, out early pruning their vines before the sun gets too high.

Not much sign of the body beautiful yet though. Just stretched arms like an ape, sunburnt shoulders, and a face full of itchy, red spots. Oh, Simon is such a lucky man!

Anyway, in the absence of any real news (still no letter from the Notaire or SAFER....quelle surprise), and therefore of anything worth writing about, I have begun work on a "Pooh Corner type map" as suggested by Jane in her comment on the last post. If nothing else, it's an absorbing way to pass a few hot hours. Apart from that, I have passed the empty days while Simon is away failing to make cherry jam, failing to write poetry, and failing to meditate my way to enlightenment.

Sitting in the shade and solitude of the terrasse, looking out across the summer-filled valley to the distant wildness, is very conducive to the arising of profound and creative thoughts. Unfortunately, the soporific heat is not conducive to the embodiment of such thoughts in any form that requires physical or mental effort. Perhaps, after all, I'm just too idle to become enlightened.

Ah well. There's always the next life....

Just before I end this midsummer monologue, to return to the cartographic artwork, here's a thought I'd like to share...

Given the opportunity, would Buddha have meditated in a deck-chair?

The Waiting is Over

Well. The 17 June arrived and so did the postlady. No post again. Nothing from the Notaire. Nothing from SAFER. Could it really be that this had all been a storm in a teacup?

Whilst beginning to believe that maybe our hopes and plans for the Big Land of our dreams might actually come to pass, I still could not entirely shake off the feeling that it wasn't over yet. My brother-in-law had warned us about the Last-Minute tendencies of French bureacracy (he had waited the regulation month to find out whether a planning application would be successful, and then received a letter on the very last day of the deadline informing him that it had been turned down), and the continued cheerful greetings of our land-purchase competitor had left me uneasy.

We occupied our minds with other things. We practised getting the breeding llamas in our smallest of small catch-pens, one at a time, as part of a desensitising process aimed at getting them to accept us haltering and unhaltering them.

Fatma didn't like it at all, and tried to get underneath the wooden gate construction to join her pals. Knowing that we had fixed the hinge problem, so that she couldn't just lift the gate up like Valentine had, so spectacularly, a few weeks ago, we waited for her to accept the inevitable and settle down. She didn't. She put her head under the gate, barged forward, broke the wood in half with a gut-wrenching cracking sound, and escaped to the relative freedom of the larger catch pen. She looked at us with a smugly smug expression on her smug llama face.

Foiled again. My god, these damn llamas are strong! And Fatma is the smallest and lightest of the adults! We looked in dismay at the destruction in front of us. It had taken a fair bit of time and effort to create that gate, and it had crumpled in a matter of seconds. We sighed. We tried to envisage our Plan B. I had a feeling it was not going to be a good day.

We returned to the house to nurse our emotional wounds and to wonder once again whether we could actually DO THIS. If we can't even keep a flighty llama in a small pen to halter it, how on earth are we ever going to trim their toe nails, or move them to another field? Cue another crisis of confidence....

Then ..... an insistent bang at the door. It had to be our friend and neighbour Giles (anyone else would ring the doorbell). Sure enough, there he stood, with a face full of thunder. "I come with the bad news..." he said. He had telephoned the Notaire, and had been told that they had just received (via a Court Bailiff) notification that SAFER was exercising its Droit de Preemption. They had had to deliver the notification this way, as they had left it too late to use the post. The Notaire's secretary had never known of such a last-minute intervention. (Hard to believe that somehow....).

A few minutes later Giles' father arrives. Yes it is true. SAFER are buying his land, and they will decide what happens to it. Giles is fuming. We try to be reassuring. "Never mind. It's not over yet. There will be a consultation process. We can still present our project". It feels as if the news has affected Giles more than us. Afterall, we've sort of been expecting this, and were surpised only that it hadn't happened earlier. "C'est la vie!" I venture, with a Gallic shrug, pleased at the opportunity to appropriately use one of my few French phrases. Giles is not impressed.

After they leave, we briefly contemplate the situation, before deciding not to think about it any more today. We'll let our underminds work away at it, while we enjoy a bit of gardening and bird-watching. It'll all be fine.

The next morning, while driving to the airport for Simon's trip to England, I confess to a childish sense of disappointment and resentment. I know that both are irrational, and also that I only feel disappointed because, having got right up to the deadline, I had started to believe that we might actually end up buying the land after all. And even though I had tried not to, I had started to plan how we would arrange and fence and use the land. I had begun to expect something. And therein lies suffering. Clearly I am a slow-learner in the Art of Living Happily.

However, I also know that there will come a time when we will look back and be pleased that things turned out the way they did. Because one lesson I have learnt is that blessings very frequently come in disguise.

So, for now we will explore all the options Mme Burgat's land has to offer, momentarily scale down our plans for our long-term llama breeding enterprise, and enjoy what we have here and now. And at the same time, we'll research the SAFER procedures from this point, decide what sort of case we want to make, and think about how we might do a deal with Mr Winemaker to at least try to keep the use of the Rough Land where our small herd of Walking Llamas are currently (very happily) spending their lazy days.

Another month. Another field to conquer.

Last Friday dawned dull and drizzly. At 11.00am, after our morning visit to the llamas, we called at Mme Burgat's house as arranged. Despite the less-than-perfect weather, Mme Burgat insisted that we should still go to look at her land, and we duly whisked her off in our mud-covered land rover, following her directions along the slippy tracks until we got as far as we could in the car. Again, despite the fact that it was raining, and very muddy, and she was only wearing toeless, backless sandals and no coat, Mme Burgat insisted that she would be fine holding my arm and her walking stick, to proceed at a snail's pace down the last 100 meteres of undriveable track, to get to the entrance to her 'field'.

It has obviously been a very long time since she has been anywhere near it, and she was somewhat horrified to discover how overgrown it had become. In fact it was impossible to get into it without some serious 'debrousaillage' happening first, so after a difficult (and a bit scarey) turning manoevre, we returned to Mme Burgat's house, to look at her very big, very old cadastral plans of the bits of land she owns, and to hear the stories of her husband's love of the countryside, and his sudden death aged 59yrs, while out in the countryside, collecting snails.

When Sunday arrived with a bit of sunshine, Simon headed off to Mme Burgat's field with his trusty brush-cutter, while I did the rounds with our dog Max, to visit and feed the llamas. When I eventually arrived at Mme Burgat's field, Simon had managed to cut a narrow path through the blackthorn, down one side of the field.

I approached with a sinking heart, realising that, if we agreed to use this land, another big load of hot and difficult work lay ahead of us before it would be fit for llama occupation. Simon, in a more optimistic mood, struck out through the middle of the sea of blackthorn, heading for the middle of the enclosure, to see if there was any open, grassy space that would make the land usable. I looked for a shady spot to leave the dog, while getting the tree-loppers and camera from the car. Then, (clearly determined that Simon should not continue to be cheerful while I was feeling so depressed) I very cleverly managed to shut the heavy back door of the land rover, on his camera. Twice.

I honestly didn't do it on purpose - I had put it down whilst faffing with the dog, forgotten it was there, and tried to shut the door. When the door jammed the first time, I didn't see what had stopped it shutting, and so slammed it again even harder. When it STILL didn't shut, I looked again more carefully, and then noticed a little black (slightly crushed) object that I realised, with horror, was the camera in its leather case. With sweating hands, I took it out the case, hoping beyond hope that by some miracle of anti-physics that it would have survived the double blow intact. (I can be stupidly optimistic sometimes). I stared at the strange purple-yellow patterns on the digital screen, recognising the telltale signs of terminal screen-crack. It looked just like the broken screen on the car battery solar-charger that I had managed to squash when loading the car back in March. I switched it on, and the moving parts moved. Perhaps, since it also has a viewfinder, it might still be possible to take photos?

A few sick moments passed while I debated putting the camera back where I'd found it and pretending to know nothing about it, or perhaps telling Simon that the wind had blown the door shut on it. How could I have been so stupid and clumsy? How could this not totally spoil his day?
Of course, the childish urge to avoid taking reponsibility for my actions quickly passed, and I shambled back down the blackthorn-strewn path-of-doom to confess my sin.

Simon, bless him, was cool as a cucumber about it. Lessons in non-attachment seem to come along thick and fast these days. I swear that despite all my worthy efforts at self-improvement, Simon is racing ahead of me along the path of enlightenment, without even trying.

Anyway, I followed him through the second prickly lane he had cut, to the centre of the field, where the blackthorn thicket gradually gave way to a forest of ash saplings and some very long grass. I took a couple of photos using the view-finder to frame the pictures, and discovered that the zoom didn't work either. (Bum. It won't be as simple as just getting a new screen for it off ebay, then!)






Standing in the middle of this 'clearing' it was hard to see the boundaries, and it became obvious that fencing this land would not be as straightforward as we might have hoped. But then it never is!

I guess we'll manage. It'll be hard, but it'll get done and the difficulty will pass. At least the land is only gently sloping, rather than steep, and is pretty much rectangular.






And Mme Burgat will be so very pleased to see it brought back from the brink of blackthorn annihilation, and used again as animal pasture, as it was when she and her husband were young and full of dreams.










And we still have another area of her land to go and look at, as soon as the weather is reliably dry, and the tracks up the hillside to the south of the village are passable enough for an old lady to engage in another countryside trip down memory lane.

Relocation update

I was worried last night that Ana would not have settled down with Duc/Valentine. Things started well, but deteriorated. This video shows them tolerating each other - but then at 32 seconds there is the best shot I have seen of a llama spitting to warn another off.

Everyone seems to know that llamas spit - and we have learned that there are many degrees and types of this behaviour (that's got to be worth a post of its own in due course). This case was at the mildest end, and Duc was only being assertive about his personal space. However, by mid afternoon, Ana was refusing to stay near the other two, and she would not come to me for any tempting food either. I returned several times to the field and eventually, late in the evening, I was delighted to see the three of them grazing together.

This morning, all three were quickly down to the catch pen to eat some concentrate. Although there was obviously still some tension, they were content to be in a pretty small space together, and all three allowed us to touch them.

When they had eaten a snack, they were happy to return to the field as a group.


Ana does seem to be settling in. Within a week I think theyll be hanging round together like best mates . . . .

Expect nothing. Live frugally, on surprise.

I am very fond of passing the odd moment perusing internet sites for interesting quotes about Life, The Universe and Everything. Yesterday, I happened to be reading through a few quotes about Life on http://www.wisdomquotes.com/, searching for a suitably pithy response to the comments on my last post, when I came across the title of this post as a quote from a poem by Alice Walker. I shared it with Simon, who was disappointingly underwhelmed by my discovery, and for one reason or another (oh yes, we were busy moving Ana!) never got round to posting it, or indeed any other comment, on the blog.

Although I have in the past thought of myself as someone who doesn't like surprises, experience would suggest that I have been fooling myself. Much to my surprise, for example, I thoroughly enjoyed the surprise 50th birthday celebration, and the surprise Leaving Work celebration that my erstwhile Team colleagues arranged for me - the latter of which (for the information of readers who aren't erstwhile Team colleagues) was a formative and never-to-be-forgotten afternoon of llama-interaction, (along with some extremely silly party games involving space-hoppers and the like).

I suppose that, to enjoy surprises, one has to be comfortable with not being in control of things. Of course, the converse of this, is that once you realise and accept the fact that you really are not in control of your destiny, you open the door to the Unexpected, and can experience the joy of constantly being surprised by what Life throws your way.

And so to the point.....

A little while ago, the doorbell rang - always an ominous sound in this house, as we know that opening the door will result in some sort of difficult, and unprepared-for conversation in French. There is always a tense delay in our response, as Simon and I try to out-slow each other in getting up and going to open the door. Today I won, and carried on pretending to be busy, while Simon opened the door to find Mme Burgat standing there, frailly propped up on a walking stick.

We last saw Mme Burgat in December last year when, following a comment from our neighbour that she might have some land for sale, we bravely knocked on her door to ask her about it. At the time, she was virtually bedridden because of problems with her legs, but was very welcoming and friendly all the same. Unfortunately though, she had already sold the field in question to 'The Belgians' (whoever they may be). She did mention that she might have some other land she could sell, and said she would get her grandson to contact us.

The days, weeks and months went by. We didn't hear from her grandson, and having since become aware of all the difficulties and feuds associated with the buying and using of agricultural land in this village, assumed that we never would. In fact, we had forgotten all about it.

And then suddenly, in the midst of all of our uncertainty about what is happening about the land we thought we were going to buy from our neighbour's father, up pops Mme Burgat on our doorstep, and she wants to offer us some land for the llamas.

It turns out that she has been in hospital for four months, after breaking her femur when trying to move from her bed to her chair, and has had lots of operations on her legs. She is now recovering and, determined that she will not become bedridden again, she is making herself get up and walk. And today she decided she would attempt the walk up through the village to find our house and ask us if we still want to look at her land.

So, tomorrow at 11.00am, we are going with her who knows where in our car, to look at what she has to offer. And in the meantime, our neighbour has contacted the Notaire's secretary to find out the actual deadline by which SAFER have to respond, if they are going to intervene in our purchase of his father's land, and it turns out that the deadline date is 17th June. Five days to go, and still nothing so far.

Strangely these days of Uncertainty are beginning to feel like moments to savour. Until we know for sure, absolutely anything is possible. So I will continue to Expect nothing, and live frugally, on surprise.

Relocation, relocation, relocation

Our client this week is a young female llama. Tired of living with the older residents in her current field, Ana is looking to strike out on her own, and perhaps find suitable accommodation with a group of young llamas who will be more interesting company for a girl approaching adulthood. Little does she realise how soon her wishes will come true . . . .

We had decided that Ana needed to be removed from Pedro’s harem, before she actually reached maturity. Having finished the construction of a new catch pen on the Rough Land, we knew that there was no good reason to delay – even though we were very uncertain of how Ana would react.

The potential problem was that, as far as we know, Ana had only ever had a lead on her once. This was when she first arrived at our land, and I led her from Mike’s horsebox. She had not reacted well to the experience, and she had danced around, jumping and pulling all the way.

In preparation for the impending move, Val had very successfully fitted her with an adapted halter and I have been working hard over the last couple of weeks to develop a close relationship with Ana, hoping that this would help her to accept the trauma I was about to inflict.

So, early this morning, after completing the normal feeding routine, we ushered all the other llamas out of the catch pen, and I casually slipped a lead on to Ana’s halter. No reaction from her. So far, so good.

The other llamas knew something was going on. They were just outside the catch pen, and tensions were clearly rising. Lots of clucking and some spitting. Time to get moving before the distress spread to Ana . . .

Unfortunately, Ana did not share this view. When a llama doesn’t want to move, they don’t dig their heels in . . . . . they use their long pointed toes. With all her weight leaning backwards, and four pairs of toes firmly planted in the ground, she clearly did not intend to leave the security of her home field!

Of course, I had to win, but I couldn’t drag her for any distance. She was resisting as hard as she could, and she was starting to get pretty stressed. Somehow I managed to get her a few feet down the steep slope out of the field gate. Time seemed to stand still, and I was able to concentrate wholly on this poor frightened, struggling creature. All of the stress I had felt in advance faded away, and I was suddenly much more confident. This seemed to communicate to Ana, and she gave way a little. We progressed down to the road in a stuttering series of stand offs – she resisted, and then she gave a little. As soon as she moved, I relaxed the pressure on the lead and praised her. As soon as she pulled back, I increased my pull.

Ana is a very clever llama and she was learning fast. Our stop-start progress continued down the short stretch of tarmac road till we could turn off down the side of a vineyard. Now we could all relax more – and Val was able to stop acting as traffic lookout and guard, and take some video.




As you can see, after her very hesitant start, Ana became increasingly more confident, until she actually wanted to take the lead as we eventually reached the Rough Land, where the other llamas were waiting, excited by her approach.

At this point, I had no idea whether she would settle down in the new field, but I was on a real high. Perhaps we really can do this llama rearing business. Yes, all I’ve done is move one untrained llama between two fields . . . . but it feels like a huge step forward.

The Age of Uncertainty

These are uncertain times.

Two months ago we signed the 'compromis de vente' for the 8 hectares of land around the village, that we are hoping to buy for our llamas to graze. When we first discussed the possible purchase with the present owner, we were aware that that much of the land was currently being used by a local wine-maker (who also grows wheat and sunflowers on a big scale), who would therefore have first option to buy the land. However, when he was offered the possibility of buying the land he was using, he said he didn't want to.

Even so, we knew that that any sale of agricultural land in France would be subject to a complex bureaucratic system designed to prevent the break-up of viable farms, to protect the rights of tenant farmers, and to ensure that such land remains in agricultural use, within the terms of the local agricultural 'development plan'. So, after our visit to the Notaire to sign the pre-purchase contract, the paperwork was duly sent off to SAFER (Societe d'Amenagement Foncier et Etablissement Rural), who then had two months within which to decide whether to exercise their 'Droit de Preemption' to intervene in the sale and buy the land themeselves, before either selling it or renting it to a farmer of their choice. Obviously that description is a massive simplification of what seems to be an enormously complex and much misunderstood process. (Needless to say, this has providied Simon with an opportunity to utilise his famous and well-developed internet searching/legal-document-small-print reading skills). But the long and the short of it all is that our purchase of the land is not guaranteed until the two month deadline has passed, without such an intervention occurring.

Well now, that all sounds very dull and boring I know. But the situation it has stirred up in our sleepy little village is far from dull!

The first inkling we had that things would not be as straightforward as the Notaire had implied they would be, was when we were out on the Rough Land busy erecting fencing, in those hot and strenuous days a few weeks back, before we moved Duc and Valentine. A nice guy called Remy, turned up out of the blue in his 4x4 Pick-Up, to introduce himself to us as the village representative on SAFER. He came to suggest that we might not want to do too much work on the land, as it was by far from certain that we would be able to buy it. In fact, he told us, he had met with all the local 'agriculteurs', and they had raised objections to us buying the land, on the grounds that it would split up the land that is already being worked by one of them.

Despite all the work we had already put in on the Rough Land, and all the mental planning we had done about how we would use the rest of the land when the purchase was complete, our response was admirably laid back. 'Yes, we understood', we said. 'Yes, we'd happily come to a meeting, and present our 'Project''. 'Thanks for letting us know' etc etc. And when he'd gone, we carried on with the fencing. After all, we had no choice at that point. We simply had to move Duc and Valentine, regardless of how things might turn out in the future.

Since then we have waited. We have waited and listened to the angry outpourings of the son of the current land owner, who has regaled us with tales of the extensive history of village, inter-family disputes over land, and unpaid rent, and boundaries, and rights of way. We have waited and been friendly to everyone we have met, regardless of which side of the dispute they occupied. We have waited quietly, without taking any pre-emptive action whatsoever, to see what will happen. Apparently, the wine-maker who uses the land has decided he does now want to buy the land. Apparently, the village welcomes our llamas and wants to make sure we'll be alright, even if we can't buy the land. Apparently, the wine-maker can't raise the money to buy the land. Apparently SAFER will buy it. Apparently SAFER won't buy it.

Rumours and speculation abound. The days pass. We visit the llamas. We take them hay, and water, and collect their poo. We walk up and down the hill, Bonjouring and Bonsoiring to all and sundry. We wait. We notice that the Mr Winemaker and his father are becoming more expansive in their greetings and more frequent in their Bonjours. We wonder what they are thinking. We wait some more.

Then last Friday, when we were unloading shopping from the car, Mr Winemaker approached Simon. 'About the land..... , I'm sorry but I don't speak English, you understand yes? About the land....I have a proposal for you.....' He went on to explain that he wanted to buy the land, and although nothing was certain, if he did buy it, he realised we would be left with nothing for the llamas. In that case, he could lend us 6 hectares of land that he owns but is not using. He gestured across the valley to a wild hillside about a kilometre distant. We could use it free, for a number of years. He may wish to put a horse on it later when his daughter grows up. He would give us a year's notice if he needed us to move off it. We could go and have a look at it with his father.

And so the next day we duly went for a long land rover drive to reach the land, and have a long walk around it. We learnt a lot about the history of the village and the guy's family, and about the soil and the vegetation. We thought the land was lovely in many ways (a beautiful remote spot with larks singing and just the sort of land llamas would be happy to roam), but very hard to get to, with no water supply, and no obvious level spaces for building shelters. We said we'd need to think about it.

And we have thought about it, and waited. We wait for the postlady every day. Will a letter from SAFER arrive today? No, not yet. Will Mr Winemaker tell us he can buy the land? No, not yet. The landowner's son - our friend and neighbour - waits with us. He pops over every other day to see if we have heard anything. He really does not want Mr Winemaker to buy the land. We count the days. SAFER's two month slot started from the date they received the paperwork, but we don't know when exactly that was.

Two months have passed since we signed the contract. Surely it can only be a few more days now. But there is still nothing we can do except wait. Wait and See.

Of course, if we do end up buying the land, does this mean that Mr Winemaker won't like us any more? How can we make him feel OK about us taking some of his livelihood away from him? And if he buys the land, will our friend and neighbour ever forgive us for not putting up more of a fight to ensure his father's land didn't fall into enemy hands?

As always, Life is Uncertain. The future remains a mystery. I wonder what we'll be doing a month from now. I guess we'll just have to Wait and See.

C'est la Fête des Vignerons!

Saturday 7 June has arrived. A Big Day for a Little Village.

Over the last few days everyone has been busy tidying their gardens and frontages, and all the verges have been neatly mown and flailed. The messy stacks of wooden pallets and crates that generally litter the area outside any working Cave have been piled out of sight, and tractor trailers have been decorated, somewhat randomly and inexplicably, with bunches of flowering Scotch Broom. Willy, the village's employed doer-of-odd-jobs-and public-works, has been busy distributing various items of display equipment and metal railings around and about, and busy-looking women have been busily carrying busy-looking bundles of goodness-knows-what into the village hall.

Today is the festival of the Fleur de Vigne. There will be a painting competition and exhibitions of paintings in the village wine Caves. There will be food in the main square, and music from 'L'Art a Tatouille'. And in the evening, the local wine-makers will open their Caves to the public for visits and tastings and general wine-induced merriment.

And, if good sense and a lack of time for preparation hadn't inhibited us, there would have been llamas in an enclosure outside the Castle, with two friendly English idiots attempting to provide interesting facts about llamas to the hordes of curious visitors, whilst simultaneously advertising their new 'lamas-balades' business.

This was in fact the suggestion made by the enthusiastic wine-maker, whose Cave is situated opposite our front door, and who saw the opportunity to attract more visitors to his neck of the village's wine-selling woods, through the artful placement of a couple of alluring llamas in a small enclosure in the road between our house and his Cave. And for a few insane moments we were indeed tempted.

"Would the big, empty wine crates work as a fence? Perhaps the Mayor could lend us some metal barriers. Could we tether the llamas on the grass verge? Wouldn't it be a wonderful opportunity for us to publicize our enterprise? Wouldn't it be good for us to integrate into the village activity?" But even as we nodded and smiled and "oui"d, and started to contemplate the logistics of getting the llamas down the long road from the field and past the gauntlet of local loose and barkful dogs, my mind began creating the familiar images of horror and chaos.

What if the llamas were frightened by all the people and jumped out of the enclosure? What if they ran amok through the village, trailing trashed wine-display tables and art exhibitions in their wake? What if they trampled small poodles or tiny enfants? What if they spooked, and jumped off the cliff at the end of our road, and died agonising and screech-ridden deaths below hundreds of traumatised on-lookers?

After a night 'sleeping on it' (or not), we thanked the enterprising suggester for his tres bon idea, but declined to take up his suggestion on this occasion. "We need to do more training with the llamas. They are not ready, just yet. They would be frightened by so many people. They are still a bit wild. Thank you for your kind offer of help. Perhaps next time....."

And so the Big Day will pass without an unusual contribution from 'those English with the llamas'. And if the weather doesn't perk up a bit soon, it will probably pass without much of a contribution from the 'artistes passionnes' or even the general public. 15 degrees, a strong north-westerly wind and showers is not what you'd expect for a June fete in the south of France. Sounds more like a school summer fair in Derby, actually. Perhaps in the absence of the interesting llama display, we should offer ourselves up to have cold, wet sponges thrown at our heads instead.

A Nightingale sang.....

....but not in Berkeley Square.

Here is just a little (aural) glimpse of some of the loveliness of the valley below Roquetaillade that we are lucky enough to experience every day.



Sometimes, when we have stopped our daily travail for a relaxing bit of lunch on the terrasse, it is very hard to pull ourselves away from just sitting and looking and listening.

Despite the ups and downs of our challenging new life, I haven't experienced such a general sense of calm and well-being since...., well, actually, since I was taking Seroxat about 10 years ago, to deal with work-induced stress!! I'm anticipating that this current approach to raising Seratonin levels won't be accompanied by unpleasant or harmful side effects, (an increased risk of suicide seems exceedingly unlikely).

The Passing of Childhood

As with humans, so with llamas.

Babies don't stay babies for long, and (even though the experience at the time feels otherwise) teenagers don't stay teenagers for long.


Capucine is growing rapidly and developing her very own personality along the way. She is still incredibly fluffy and endearing in her bounciness, but she is now eating hay, grass and small trees, and drinking water from the bucket, just like a proper grown-up. Of course, she is still drinking Mum's milk whenever she wants, but she spends increasingly less time hanging around her.











Her favourite companions at the moment are Ana, who is still childish enough to join in with Capucine's silly games, and Pedro, who is an irresistible target for much of Capucine's more physical behaviour. She loves to jump on him, and barge him (often when the poor guy is trying to concentrate on eating his daily portion of concentrate food), and generally get under his feet. For a big, macho stud, he is surprisingly tolerant of Capucine's antics.

Whilst we cannot help but feel a little sad at the loss of Capucine's babyhood, the sadness is offset by fact that she is becoming more interesting as she gets older. It's a funny thing, but now, when we look her in the eye, it feels much more as if there is 'somebody home' - as if there is something going on inside her head. Already the time has come for her to start school, and begin the long, slow process of training that will hopefully shape her into an approachable, amenable llama who will let us halter her, groom her coat and touch her feet.




Ana meanwhile has reached that difficult stage that all sensible parents dread. Adolescence! Yes she likes to run around playing 'let's pretend we're being chased by a puma', with Capucine. But she also likes to put on her make-up and prance around in high heels in front of Pedro. Whilst this is all perfectly normal, and only to be expected, we have noticed lately that Pedro actually seems to be taking more than just a paternal interest in this behaviour of hers. He is becoming quite possessive of her, and gets pretty stroppy when she shares her affectionate attentions with anyone other than him. So whenever we spend a lot of time with her, stroking her neck, and generally taking advantage of the fact that she is such an amazingly friendly and trusting llama, he responds with a bit of bargey posturing, and dominance-reinforcing behaviour. At present, luckily for us, such behaviour is aimed only at Ana, and in response she duly tucks her tail submissively over her back, and say's sorry. Not quite a proper teenager yet, I guess.

More worryingly though, Pedro is showing increasing interest in Ana's rear end. She will insist on parading it around under his nose of course, and with Fatma and Elif both being 'unavailable' to him, (and giving him a hard time, as pregnant women do!), you can't blame the poor lad for checking out the possibilities. But there is a real chance that she could become fertile within the next month or so, and we really, really don't want a teenage pregnancy on our hands. So, having put off the day for as long as we sensibly could, the time has finally come for Ana to leave home, and take up residence in Duc and Valentine's batchelor pad.


With this end in mind we have cleverly trained Ana to accept having a halter put on her. So cleverly trained in fact that, in contrast to all the shenanigans that are necessary to get a halter on (or indeed off) any of the other llamas, we can simply walk up to her in the field and put it on her. I'd love to think this is the successful result of my careful training with the halter-in-the-food-bucket method, but I suspect that she's just a very Easy llama (in all senses of the word!).



Of course, none of the halters we have were small enough for her elegantly narrow head, and the first two occasions of halter-application resulted in her sliding it off her head and down her neck, during her frequent sticking-the-neck-through-the-fence antics when grazing on the out-of-reach yummy grass. So, with some sharp scissors and a piece of hot wire, I modified the halter and, third time lucky, she is now the proud owner and wearer of the customized halter that will hopefully enable us to walk her sedately (ha) over to the Rough Land, on the day of our choosing.

Capucine seems to think Ana's halter has been put there for her playful benefit, and she likes to get hold of bits of it to chew. She will certainly miss Ana when she leaves home. But, hopefully, in only a couple of month's time, she will have a young sibling to play with, and she will take her turn at being older sister for a change.

Meanwhile, Pedro will just have to put up with his lot as the hen-pecked male, subject to Elif's stroppy looks and Fatma's snorts, which effectively keep him away from any food (or anything at all) until they say it's alright for him to get a look-in.





No prospect of a shag until after Elif offloads her baby in August (gosh - we can't wait to see him trying to mate with aloof Elif, Queen of the Castle and Mistress of Acrimony), and no chance of exploring the nubile possibilities of Ana, until she returns from the Rough Land Finishing School late next year.

A hard life?