Chasing Sunflowers

Summer has arrived at Chateau Coldspot and the excessive temperatures have confined la Chatelaine to her boudoir where she fortunately has internet, coffee and a yoga mat so hardly needs to venture out at all. Happy Holidaymakers are slowly starting to infiltrate the gites, which is good news, as le Comte and I find we can have too much of splendid isolation, and it also means we will be able to eat next year. Our Riders from the East are here in spirit if not always in body and are assiduously keeping Ramadan. Last week at sunset they broke their fast with a meal of spiced sheep cooked in a hole they have dug in the garden expressly for this purpose. They have brought with them a particularly aromatic collection of spices and le Comte and I sat drooling in our quarters waiting to be offered some. We were, and it was delicious.

Terrace rather than steps

Spring at Chateau Coldspot has been long and rather beautiful. Le Comte’s building projects have thankfully drawn to a positive conclusion and it is now possible to get into the holiday apartments again. Where once there were concrete steps, there are now wooden terraces; where there was dirt and patchy grass, there is 20 tonnes of gravel, so much improved all round.

Bored goose

Despite their advancing age les geese made another attempt at starting a family and in the beginning things looked promising; several eggs were laid and la goose sat on them, shrieking at all who ventured near – only moi, actually. But life is dull sitting on your own in a disused toilet block, and gestation takes a tedious 40 days, which was about 30 too long for la goose. Or possibly she heard le Comte muttering about Christmas dinner and decided not to bring offspring into the world if that was to be their fate. Personally, I think she might have stayed on the nest if only le Comte had provided something a bit more interesting to look at. There was plenty of room for a flat screen TV on the wall and the time you can spend counting flecks on grey concrete is limited.  So up she got and off she waddled, leaving the half-cooked eggs to Mr Fox or Mrs Polecat, whichever arrived first.

Le Comte striding out

The Good Works have also continued with le Comte and la Chatelaine involving themselves in various fundraising activities, notably 25km a march along la plage squeezed in between thunderstorms; and a vide grenier organised by friends. Vide grenier literally means empty the attic – although it was more a vide cellar in Coldspot’s case, the Chateau being shallow roofed and generally short on attics. Funds were raised beyond our expectations and mountain people in distant Nepal have been duly helped.

Princess 2 turned up recently for a sadly brief visit and a respite from the weather in le Pays de Galles which is apparently awful (told her so!) and consists of many mists. Therein hide the sprites and sprogs and all the little people Wales is famous for, to say nothing of Owen of Glendower. But like her mother, la Chatte, she probably spends much time in her boudoir so it doesn’t overly matter.

We took advantage of her visit to cavort in Sunflower fields – harder than in sounds as the temperatures were in the early thirties celsius, which is around 90 degrees farenheit, donc, hot. But we took some excellent pictures which may become the cover of la Chatelaine’s forthcoming novel, helpfully entitled, CHASING SUNFLOWERS. Essential summer reading for all.