Normal

Oh dear. Another three weeks have passed without a blog entry. Shame on us! Excuses this time? A week's visit from Simon's Mum and Dad, followed by a stint of time helping my sister and bro-in-law to renovate their village house in time for a tenancy arrangement starting on 15 October.

Simon's parents got the usual Welcome to the Roquetaillade Llama-and-Chicken Experience, albeit without the llama walking activity.

Valentine overcame his misgivings about approaching big metal things containing strangers to eat a little snack from Simon's Mum's hand out of the landrover...

...and Capucine astounded us by taking her first ever piece of hand-fed carrot from his Dad, despite the ominous presence of an unusual big stick.


As is often the case when we have visitors, we found ourselves looking at our surroundings with holiday eyes, taking some time just to sit and enjoy the sunshine and the views, and to really appreciate the loveliness of October in this climate. However, the family visits are over for the time being (more planned for November), and for the moment things are back to normal.

Normal? Now there's an interesting concept.

According to Ellen Goodman, (no, I don't know who she is either...)

"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it."

I guess, not so long ago, that was sort of Normal for us too. And, to friends and colleagues still fully enagaged in the life we left behind, our current Normal wouldn't seem normal at all. Our days now consist of a limited range of repetitive activities involving the care, feeding and cleaning of our animals (and of ourselves). We rarely use the car, we wear the same old stuff day in, day out (not much change there, come to think of it...), and we are at home pretty much all the time, when we're not out with the animals.

Life is simple and, well, ordinary. It seems hard to think of anything to write about when every day is so similar to the one before.

The most notable event of the last week was the discovery last Sunday morning of a gaping, two-metre-wide hole in the fence of the Breeders' field, just in front of the field shelter. Simon had gone over to the Rough Land to visit the Walkers, and I had done my usual morning stuff with the Breeders. I noticed Fatma's halter was missing, and assumed she had managed to pull it off whilst foraging through the fence for a delicious bit of ash tree on the other side - it was quite loose after all. I thought little more of it, until I carried a fresh bale of hay up to the shelter, turned round to admire the view back to the village, and saw a big space where the fence should have been.

Someone had cut the wire grill in a big L shape and bent back the fencing, leaving the field open straight on to the road. It took me a while to actually believe what I was seeing. After all - the llamas were all present and correct, and behaving quite normally. Putting the fact of the hole together with the fact of the missing halter, I constructed in my imagination a scenario of attempted animal theft, in which Fatma had managed to evade capture by wriggling out of her halter - and for once I was thankful that llamas can be so hard to catch. But why (or indeed how) anyone would try to steal llamas by cutting the fence, and pulling them down a steep bank on to the road, instead of just opening the gate, baffled me.

Needless to say, I effected a hasty repair, tying the fencing together with the baler twine I'd just removed from the hay, and called Simon on his mobile with the interesting news. Cunningly hiding his disappointment that I wasn't ringing to inform him of an impending llama birth behind his normal, run-of-the-mill crisis-response tone, Simon formulated a well-considered plan of action. "Stay there, I'm coming."

Luckily we still had a bit of a roll of fencing left in the garage, so we collected all the neccessary bits and bobs and returned to replace the damaged panel. Of course it took longer than we expected - all our careful tensioning of the whole length of the road-side fence had depended on the integrity of the fencing wire - but we managed an adequate fix that looked almost as good as new. Clearly the llamas were in no hurry to go walkabout (not even Capucine, who regularly pokes her head through the fence to eat, just like Ana used to do), so I was not really concerned that they would escape. I just didn't want any sharp bits where their foraging necks might be leaning.

A later conversation with our neighbour resulted in the dogmatic verdict that it wasn't attempted theft, but was a personal attack by a crazy, jealous person who wanted to cause us difficulty and the expense of the repair. Apparently, the same thing had happened to them when they used to keep horses on the land, although they had suffered more, because the horses had actually got out, and had to be rounded up from the road. They advised us to take photos of the damage and to report it to the gendarmarie.

Too late for the photos, and, we decided, not much point in reporting it. Best to just ignore it and try not to get paranoid. I figured that causing a fuss would probably give the perpetrator something to watch and enjoy, and that the zen thing to do would be to forgive and forget, and carry on as normal with a friendly smile for everyone we come across. Of course the paranoia sneeks in now and then, followed by a cascade of negative thinking in which everyone in the village hates and resents us, and will not cease to hound and harrass us until we give up and leave, with our sad and sorry outsiders' tails hanging dejectedly between our immigrant legs.

But a week has gone by. All is Quiet on the Western Front, and the paranoia is fading away in the mid-October sunshine. Our training activities with the Walkers continue with gradually increasing levels of challenge. We now often take Valentine and Ana out together, as Duc seems quite happy to spend a little bit of time on his own. He is very much the leader of their little herd, and as such has developed a bit of a Man-Alone demeanour, often to be found grazing apart from the other two, and a bit higher up the hill.

And in attempting to close the gap toward the goal of bringing the llamas right into the village, Simon has begun walking Duc and Valentine along a track that circles just outside the boundary of habitation, in full view of the children cavorting noisily on the tiny play area next to the village hall, and of the variously stationed platoon of barking dogs that inhabit our end of the village. This route also brings them into full view of the Breeders, who watch with curiousity and wariness from their splendid vantage point higher up the road. Pedro, in particular, watches the progress of these upstart threats to his herd dominance with a rigid posture and unwavering gaze, following the direction of their walking long after they have actually disappeared from sight.

The mysterious cause of Elif's increase in size remains to be determined. Still no offspring. Still no diminishing of her appetite.

Always at the front of the queue to get into the shelter with the fresh hay....









...and always the one with her nose in the bag looking for any remaining morsels of breakfast, when the others have accepted that it really is "All Gone".

I'm still uncertain as to whether I should be feeding her up in preparation for an impending birth, or putting her on a diet to lose the flab. Either way, it's so hard to resist those big brown eyes when she gets up close with her warm breath on my face, and looks hopefully toward the food bag when I'm zipping it up, as if to say, " Just one more mouthful....go on....pleeeease."