Reflections

So when DO we move house? Well, I wish I knew - the problem is that the hauliers will not tell us - this is France you understand. As well as I can tell you it will be at the end of July or early August. I am looking forward to it. I want to be near the sea again. I was bred and buttered by the sea on the Estuary of the Fowey River;"Oh the harbour of Fowey Is a wonderful spot and there I enjoy to sail in a yacht;
To sail in a yacht round a mark or a buoy;Oh a wonderfil spot is the harbour of Fowey” - Hilaire Belloc and how I agree with him. How I loved Fowey Harbour. Golant which was the Family home was a mile or two upstream, but we had a base in Fowey. The 'boat house' just downstream from the Bodinnic Ferry it had a hard landing, two fixed moorings, a two story boat house, and a three story cottage. The whole thing was owned and shared by various parts of our family and I well remember my horror when it was decided to sell it when the house up the river was up for sale after my much loved grandmother died. Bless her it nearly broke my heart - that was my home and I loved it. This all happened back in the early 1950s. I got an early lesson in taxation. I don't know how many of you remember Death Duties. The system then was if the deceased bequeathed his or her possessions and then held on to life for 7 years he / he escaped the payment of duty. Granny had little time for the Labour government of the time and hung onto life, but it was no good the poor old lady handed in her cards just 6 weeks within the seven years. This was a disaster for the family as apart from losing Granny, her death came at a time of a fiscal slump and all the family assets had to be sold off at fires sale prices. I remember the Boat House, as it was much discussed at the time. I remember the sale price as being some £10,000. As a water front property in a prime position, it would have been worth a very moderate fortune today, with several extra zeros on the end, but such, I suppose, is life. How are you on éoleonnes (French for Wind Farms). If you had travelled from my Northumbrian Home to Edinburgh, you would have gone through a great plantation of the things on top of Sutra Hill. Well now they have plonked another gracopse of them on a neighboriun farm near here. I cannot say that I am best suited but they do not worry me over much. The thing is what can be the use of the things? Nothing at all says my friend the Professor of Engineering. He says that the cost of building and erecting these things can never be paid for out of the income they might produce. In other words they are a complete waste of money, which is pretty much what all the locals have been saying. In our local town, where Madame does the shopping, there are lots of pedestrian crossings and I have to say that the French are pretty good about stopping to let a pedestrian cross, especially lame old buggers hobbling along on sticks. As I set forth out to cross the road by the Bakerie the other day and I could sense a car approaching the crossing the from the other side. As I set out across the crossing and I could feel the car creeping up to me. I kept going and then I felt the car coming along and then I could feel the tyre creeping along the side of my foot. That was enough - I shouted - "That's my foot you stupid old Bitch!" Anyway that stirred up the Market Place - the man who had been painting the wood work on the Baker's window vaulted down from his cradle and began a high volume row with the car driver, whom I now saw for the first time. It was not a woman at all. It was a tiny man who was too small to see over his steering wheel, he had to look through the wheel and quite obviously could not see the foot he was running over. I began to feel sorry for the poor wee feller, especially as he now had half the market people shouting at him - well no one likes their foot being squashed even by very small people in very small vans. No one thinks that it is a good idea and sorry as I now felt for the poor little bugger, neither do I. .Just had a visit from two people who wanted to look at Basil He is called Basil because he was made in Basle,. He is my four wheeled cycle and a jolly good egg I think. I plod all round the local lanes on him and as he has 'assistance electronique' he trolls along very happily as long I remember to charge his battery up regularly. The Monsieur was very lame and as I understood it he needed a caliper to make his leg do what he wanted it to do, rather than the other way about. Well I thoroughly understand about the annoyance of bits of you not co-operating with you, so I wish him well, but to the point of letting him have Basil.