Things That Have(n't) Happened.

I am currently in the process of writing a review of our first six months in the Land of the Free Fruit and Vegetables. However, as I launched into the third wordy paragraph (of the introduction!), I realised it would be some time before the undertaking would be complete, and that, if it was to include any incidental detail of the daily funandhilarity of our present existence, it would end up being so long that no one would ever bother to read it. So I thought I'd better do a short update just to let y'all know we're still here, and we still care.

Things that have happened recently:

• Naughty Chicken has started laying eggs (at last!) and yesterday was our first ever Four Egg Day. I am already going off scrambled eggs on toast.
• Naughty Chicken has got into the vegetable garden, necessitating the hasty construction of a chicken-proof barrier above the garden wall. At the time this happened, I was convinced she was terrorising me, as she flew/jumped over the wall after chasing (well, hastily following) me all around the garden and up to the gate. Simon manfully dragged himself out of his Sunday morning lie-in to catch her and return her to the main garden. As he turned his back to walk away, congratulating himself on a chicken-catching job well done, she promptly flew/jumped back over the wall again, trumpeting smugly to herself, as she headed for those delicious baby lettuces, laid out in neat little breakfast-shaped rows. Naughty and Persistent Chicken.
• Naughty Chicken has escaped from the garden, and was found today browsing contentedly in the adjacent overgrown land of a neighbour, in the company of a large black and white cat. Having so far failed to clarify her exact escape route, we have not yet sealed the breach. Instead we are trying to make the home garden a more compelling place-to-be, through the provision of tasty bowls of leak and potato soup (of which we can - and do - make vast quantities). Naughty, Persistent and Greedy Chicken.
• Pedro has become happily accustomed to having his halter fitted, and is getting used to being led around inside the field on his lead, in preparation for stepping out with us into the big, bad world. He seems more like a big, soft, woolly teddy-bear every day.
• Capucine has eaten some carrot-peel from the ground in the catch-pen. Not a big deal I hear you mutter - but the implication of this is that we can now start encouraging her to eat pieces of carrot from our hands, and then we will be able to use hand-fed treats to reinforce any behaviours we want her to learn. Bring on the burning hoops!
• Pedro and Fatma are still mating with a depressing degree of regularlty. Nice for Pedro, I'm sure. Not so good for us, the ever-hopeful owners of a llama-breeding business. Unless Fatma happens to be one of those unusual females that continue to tolerate mating even when pregnant, there will not be any more little ones running around their feet within the next twelve months at least.
• We have conducted our first fully French, non-family visit to the llamas. Following a phone call last Monday from a french lady asking if she could bring a group of school children to feed the llamas, we duly escorted 7 small children, between 3 and 6 years of age (5 french, one belgian and one german) and 2 staff members of their out-of-school club, to see and feed both groups of our llamas. We even rounded off the event by walking Valentine part of the way back to the village with them. Cue lots of photo opportunities of cute little children with bemused llamas. Unfortunately, it wasn't our camera! (Next time....)
• Simon has signed up for a proper French Conversation course, through the AVF (Accueil des Villes de France) and in doing so has managed to volunteer his services as an IT know-it-all to assist with their computer classes, and to volunteer our llamas as a venue for outings organised by the AVF for the many and varied groups of newcomers to the area, who avail themselves of the organisation's services.

Things that haven't happened recently:

• Elif has not had her baby. We had expected her to give birth some time in August. She is getting bigger and bigger, but shows no signs of popping just yet. Given what is going on with Fatma and Pedro, we can see how easy it is to be mistaken about when a llama has become pregnant. We are hoping that Mike and Suzanne were just a bit out with the dates. I am hoping that Elif's huge belly is not simply the result of the extra rations of concentrate food I've been giving her for the last couple of months in the belief that she was pregnant and in need of more protein. Pregnant or obese? Only time will tell.
• We have not bought any land. The long saga of the 8 hectares we were going to buy, and the wine & cereal-growing farmer who also wanted the land, and all the bureaucratic shenanegans with SAFER, has finally reached a conclusion. Having frantically put in a last-minute (literally), official, all-in-french, (slogged-over for 10 hours and proof-read by a french neighbour) request to be considered as candidates for the purchase of the land through SAFER, we ended up coming to an amicable agreement with the farmer. We agreed to withdraw our application, thus leaving him free to buy it all and to continue to develop his cereal-growing business, on the understanding that we could continue to keep our llamas on the Rough Land for at least two years, while he helps us to find a suitable alternative. He has also agreed that, when we find some land, he will clear the space for the fencing for us, using his tractor and various other items of heavy-and-very-useful-machinery. So he gets his land, the previous owner gets his money, and we get to continue to live (cost-free) on the goodwill of others.
• I have not signed up for anything. No French lessons for me. No opening-my-mouth and getting-roped-in for helping in social or work-type activities (except of course to assist Simon when his preemptive folly bears fruit). No meeting groups of other English immigrants for afternoons stumbling though woefully inadequate conversations in something-like-french-with-terrible-accents. I will stay at home with the Internet and a french dictionary, and teach myself enough to get by in all the social contact I want. Which isn't much.
• I have not overcome my feather phobia. But it's getting better. And I have stopped running away from Naughty Chicken.
• I have not finished the Pooh Corner map of Llamaland. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't.

PS This is a little note to Mike in response to his comment on our blog of 21 August.
"Sorry mate, Duc and Valentine are not for sale (to you or to anyone). They're part of the family, and we need them to teach all the young-llamas-to-come everything they know. You can't have custody, but you can have visiting rights whenever you want!"