This being the school holidays in Zone A, Rectorat de Montpellier (we are zoned, you see), Princess 1 has taken herself off to dear old Angleterre to spend a couple of days chez les Vegetariens in Crouch End. When I originally booked these flights she was planning to spend her time touring the campuses of prospective universities – specifically Reading and Leicester. But having now plumped for the sunshine and croissant option on the French south coast, this was no longer deemed necessary. She decided she would still make the trip but would spend her time touring New Look and River Island instead, with the possibility of a short detour to Bicester Village outlet centre, which is conveniently situated near her Grandmother’s. Her return flight was originally scheduled for today, to give her time to come home and doze over her maths homework before having her wisdom teeth removed later in the week. However, as we all know, a volcano has erupted in Iceland, ash and particles have flown into the stratosphere and flights are paralysed all over Northern Europe. Princess 1 is now stuck and Princess 2 has heroically cleaned up the poo balls two Sunday’s in a row.
Princess 2 seems to have assumed Princess 1’s mantel in other ways too. Since her sister’s departure she has taken to standing by the front gate talking to boys on motorbikes, just as Princess 1 used to do (and, come to think of it, just as my sister and I used to do, too). Occasionally the boys are brave enough to come up the long Coldspot drive and sit in the kitchen, but usually they stay at the gate, helmets over their arms, while the Princess and her friends toss their hair and fiddle with their mobile phones.
I have concluded that there comes a time in every girl’s life when she finds herself standing at the front gate chatting to boys on motorbikes. It passes, however, and everyone involved moves onto something else.
The skies being empty of anything larger than a buzzard and there being no end in sight to the flight chaos, Grandma has sensibly decided to book Princess 1 on the Eurostar to Avignon. Thus it transpires that she is being sent home by train, Second Class, and will arrive – if she successfully negotiates the platform change at Lille – on Wednesday evening, much too late to have her wisdom teeth removed.
Meanwhile, le Comte has been painting our agricultural basin as the frogs object if the walls are grubby. Hopefully, it will soon be refilled for the summer. The first swim of spring is always bracing as the source water is very cold when it emerges from the mountain – and it warms up slowly. Princess 2 and I will usually attempt a couple of lengths when it gets to 18°C. One year we tried 16°C but found we could hardly breathe. Le Comte and Princess 1 wait until July when it reaches 25° or 26°C.
During the last week our little farm has exploded into life. Two ducklings have hatched and are swimming happily in a flowerpot saucer in the barn; the frogs are croaking; cherry blossom is out, showing clouds of poetic white amongst the pine trees on the hill; and the gander is hissing threateningly at visitors to warn them off his geese. All my plants have arrived in tiny plugs to be grown on for the Chateau gardens – petunias, mainly, this year – so they must be replanted. And I am endeavouring to tidy up the mess the Wild Boar have made – in practice that means I have about three acres to rake over and reseed before the end of the month.
This is the best time at Coldspot, before the weather gets too hot and before the Happy Holidaymakers descend. The downside is the long days trying to manage the land. In this climate, cold turns to hot with very little warning and even in April the strength of the sun can roast freckled northern skin in a couple of hours. Time to root out the factor thirty, methinks.
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