Lundy Island! The site of a fantastic reunion, and off whose cliffs no one was driven to push anyone else. I think that speaks volumes for my family and our collective sense of humour. This here is the east coast of the island. The pink clumps are mini forests of rhododendrons.
The view from the south-west tip, with Devon a smudge on the horizon.
One of the fore-mentioned rhododendron mini forests. "Clump" just didn't seem to do it justice.
Taken from about halfway along the island, this is the view to the south, with the poorly-designed lighthouse on the horizon...
... and the view to the north. That's how small it is.
Deers!
Sheeps!
The festivities begin. This is my mum's cousin Sarah on the left, and my aunt Jean on the right. I know it's sideways - this blasted blog doesn't seem to let you rotate pictures. Just tilt yer head.
Sarah's partner Terry and my uncle Norman in full formal wear.
My cousin Mark - clearly an English country squire in the making.
This guy looks respectable and, but don't let the greying hair fool you - he was the first one under the table. Mum's cousin Irwin.
My cousin Fiona, more properly known as Fee, examining her camera, appropriately enough, as she is studying photography.
Dinner is a SERIOUS business. DON'T get in the way. My uncle Mick, his wife Ann, and my cousin Rhys keeping an eye on the roast and the spuds.
I kept trying for a good photo of this trio, but they always moved just as I was taking the picture, so they always have funny expressions. My cousin Angharad in the centre, her fiance Nick on one side and my aunt Jean on the other.
Another of my mum's cousins - Anna, Irwin's younger sister, whose hospitality I have happily abused whilst traipsing through London on my way elsewheres.
The Dinner. My aunt Ann drinking. Again. It's a wonder they haven't hidden the cooking sherry back home. On her left, Fee's boyfriend Angus - a very game participant in the family frolics.
Rhys mid-diatribe - my timing, alas, was not yet all it should be (I'm sure it had NOTHING to do with the wine), and thus his arm is blocking his face. We had a seating plan for the evening that had young by older (older, you notice, not old) and gal by guy.
One of my favourite photos - my aunt Jean and her husband Norman in their kitchen in Cornwall.
No no, they haven't escaped their asylum - this is what the English do for fun. These are Morris Dancers, a folk dance found with variations throughout the country, and what I loved about this was that they exchanged witticisms the whole time.
My cousin Rhys at home in Wales, with the canine menagerie - Boris is the white fluffy one, Toby/Tony (depending who you asked) is the little brown puppy, and Jasper, the stoic and solidly persistent lab, is the big black one.
Oh, he looks cute, but this little guy taught the others how to rummage through the garbage. He's a Bishon-Frisou, or something like that, which is a French sheepdog. They're startlingly small to someone whose idea of a sheepdog is the hairy English type, but boy, can they run.
Awwwww... only 12 weeks old.
Nope, he's not off to the mountains - this is what you wear in Wales when you're going to do some gardening in the rain. Not for the faint of heart.
Stanbrook Abbey.
The chapel at Stanbrook. This was the Vigils service, at 6:00, the first of the six prayer services that Benedictines observe every day.
A hastily taken shot of the organ. A nun came just as I was stowing the camera, and I may or may not have turned red.
The view from my bedroom window in Toulon.
The best preserved Roman arena in Europe, in Nimes. "Nimes" actually has a little hat accent on the "i," but I don't know how to make one on an English keyboard. The statue is of a French matador who became very famous and so naturally had a Spanish stage name. Bullfights in southern France traditionally aim to remove a rosette from between the bull's horns, rather than killing it.
There were people taking in the shows here 2000 years ago. 2000 years ago!
A rarity - a Roman temple with its roof still on. Alas, it wasn't dedicated to anyone exciting like Venus or Mars, but some emperor's toddler son.
I considered this to be the only suitable pose for being photographed with ancient temple columns.
The medieval walled town of Aigues-Mortes, whose walls are entirely intact and which was a starting point for many crusades because of its sheltered access to a port. The sea has now moved, and there are miles of salt marshes between the town and the coast.
More walls.
For some reason that my French hosts could not explain to me, the entrance gate had coloured papier-mache (accents missing, I know) sheep artifully to the walls so as to make it look like they were falling.
Flamingoes! Apparently they migrate, but I forget where.
The view of the harbour of Toulon from my hosts's home.
The harbour of Toulon. Toulon has always been highly prized as a port, because, as you can see, it is nicely protected by a "presqu'ile," that is, an "almost island." It sold itself to the English in the late 1700s during some war, got recaptured by Napoleon and then punished for its treachery by being stripped of its name (later restored).
Italy! Krista, the charming scrawny border collie, keeping a close eye on the rabbits.
Supper time.
A rather forlorn and very cute lamb who had temporarily misplaced its mother. Its anxious baaa-ing was quite heart-rending.
Frances discovers the aesthetic joys of mulberry eating.
My fellow WWOOFers - from left, Felicity, her daughter Briar (Kiwis), Sasha, and Kendall (Aussies).
My sleeping quarters. The picture over the bed is, of course, the madonna, though the hosts weren't religious. Italians don't say "my God," they exclaim, "madonna!"
My little living room.
This was lovely - Sergio made cheese in the kitchen sink. Here we have little cheeses draining their whey.
A Tuscan sunset.
If anyone knows of anything more tantalizing than luscious ripe fruit out of one's reach, let me know. These cherries looked so good...
Frances in action in the apple trees.
Cleavage check for insects! Ants, earwigs, and a spider all made it down there at one point or another. The ants and spider I handled - it was a little spider - but I wigged out a bit at the earwigs. (WIGGED out, get it? Earwigs? Wig? Just checking.) A word here about insects and arachnids - most of them, I could handle. I could handle spiders on my ceiling and in my bathroom, though I was disappointed in them, since I woke up with mozzie bites most mornings. I could handle an earwig in the breadbox or the sink, and even learned to pick them up to chuck them outside. Occaionally an aphid made its way onto a limb, in which case I tenderly smeared its innards across my skin. They eat the apples, after all. But what I could barely, barely handle were the flies. They weren't there the whole time - they appeared in the middle of the second week. And I discovered, when I switched orchards, that there was one particular stretch of path that they frequented, and when I walked along it, they frequented me. I have never felt more violated than the moments when I looked down at my right arm and discovered a cluster of five little half-centimetre flies on my shoulder, with five more scattered along my arm. It was awful. I felt like a lump of carrion. And the worst of it - this will no doubt be familiar to anyone who has been to Australia - is that you just can't dissuade the little bastards. No matter how many times you flick them away, they buzz back. It was madness-inducing, and even worse was the knowledge that I was about 1000 times their size, had probably 1000 times their cognitive ability, my life expectancy is at least 1000 times theirs, and yet - they won. I hated them.
Spitting out a cherry pit and trying not to laugh. Hoovering up cherries off the branch and spitting the pits everywhere is extremely satisfying. Apparently when the sheep hoover up cherries (off the ground, the branches are a bit high for them), they eat them whole, pits and all, so when evening comes and and they are lazily chewing their cud, you will find them sleeplily spitting out the cherry pits. I laughed so hard at that image.
If you will imagine hot sunshine on your back and the smell of wild mint drifting by on the breeze and a few butterflies flitting past as you look at this picture, you will get the feeling of apple thinning in Tuscany. Here I tried to capture the incredible beauty of a growing, lush apple tree in the sun.
Apples! Right. Now I'll tell you what apple thinning is. The apple tree, like much of nature and Quebecois Roman Catholic families in the past, opts for quantity in its reproductive habits. It wants to spread its seed, and the apples are the means of conveyance. However, we humans aren't interested in the seed, we want the fruit. So in summer, when the apple tree has produced a fair amount of apples the size of small plums, you ruthlessly thin a third to a half of them from the tree. Then the tree throws everything its got into the remaining fruit, producing nice big ripe apples. You see?
Sunning in the trees with no shirt! Yeah, man!
The view to the east, with the farmhouse roof visible. This was part of my daily walk up to the orchards.
Krista accompanied me every morning, trotting ahead and lolloping through the grass, sniffing with interest at various points on the path and engaging in futile pursuits of any wild rabbits that turned up - though I suspect some used to be tame. Bunnies, let me tell you, move fast when a dog is behind them. She would occasionally engage in a snuffling, snorting writhe in the orchard grass, which I suspect was a backscratching method combined with a fun way to chomp on the little apples that littered the ground.
The wabbits! Baby bunnies! And yes, I'm sorry - they are destined for the pot. We had roast kid one day, and I diffidently asked Sergio if, um, he'd killed it himself? "Ma, of courrrse!" Right.
Sergio and Jacqueline, my marvellous hosts and those brave tenacious farmers, battling against the railway tunnel construction, the noise of the nearby (apparently internationally famous) Mugello racetrack, wolves (who killed 41 sheep last year) and the accompanying bureaucratic of having the death verified by a vet and the body collected, the destruction wrought by wild boars who were introduced by hunters who have to pay an annual fee of 2000 euros to cover the damage boars inflict on the landscape, trespassers who don't see that ownership of the land precludes them from walking across it if they did so before you bought it... And on, and on. I salute them.
Our typical lunch - pasta, sauce, and salad. Oh, was it good.
Krista's mom, Leah, was at the farm when I arrived but disappeared after a few days. The assumption is that, being 13, she knew she was going to die and so went off in the wilderness to wait for it. I find that sad and beautiful at the same time. Leah used to be allowed inside the house during thunderstorms, as they scared her. Since Leah's departure, Krista has taken to innocuously flopping in the living room in the afternoon, owing to the heat - every day inching in a little further...
This was my favourit view on the whole farm, probably because it looks just so typically Tuscan.
The apple orchard - or an apple orchard, I should say, since there were three of them - in the evening.
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