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pful remarks and questions aren t you afraid for her how long have you had her now which i tried to listen and respond to while still whistling and swearing inwardly i finally shook her off climbed a nearby bank into the wood whistled a couple more times and a few moments later her predatoriness came crashing back pushing through brambles and over branches in her eagerness to return and share her joy in her adventures with me as always i m happy to say i ve never poisoned such recall as she does have by showing her anything other than delight praise treats and much whooping on our reunion most of which is genuine coming from pure relief yet it is a bit more than that the love we bear one another and a pocketful of tasty treats won t quite stop her running away after something irresistible but i m beginning to think it will make her want to come back and there s nothing like her eager wild face coming towards me or the extra affectionate cuddles we have the evening after one of her rasher exploits and her acute intense awareness and perceptions of the natural world even if she does mostly want to chase kill and eat it are infectious i never knew before in which spots in the bank the field mice lived or in which flooded ditches the water voles had their holes that there was a family of partridges that lived around the hamlet of le boissy or indeed that the roe deer sometimes graze in winter in that low lying wet paddock by the farm below quengo or in the long fields beside the mirabelle hedge i knew these places of course but not their finer more living details albeit prompted by my need to be one step ahead of her whenever possible i am curious as to why blackbirds get her going and are fun to harry and stalk when they rustle around in the hedges yet their fieldfare cousins in the open are put up in only the most lackadaisical manner and why crows are given a wide and respectful berth even an injured one in the middle of a field was left alone with very little calling off from me i am torn i want her to express her nature and the behaviours which make her what she is but i also need to restrain intercept and control them for her own safety and for the sake of the poor struggling wild creatures who are persecuted enough when spring comes and they have their young i know i must constrain her even more i hate the whole business in the modern world of humans hunting with dogs and killing for fun i m squeamish about dead and injured things but i also find myself wanting to know more about why she does what she does how much is nature and how much training as well of course as wondering why someone with a dog fine tuned to respond to pheasants hare and partridge and fairly indifferent to pigeons and rabbits simply let her get lost and never reclaimed her which we ll never know her buggering off isn t always rebelliousness or ignorance i m sure but that she thinks that s what we want her to do what a dog like elfie is supposed to do when out in the countryside with her humans her predatory impulse towards injured and lame things toads on the terrace get no more than a perfunctory sniff unless they are trapped and floundering in puddles in black plastic wagtails always catch her attention because their long tailed bobbing movement looks like the trailing flight of something damaged is repugnant to us but natural and in fact quite kind in hunting terms both in man made hunting and in nature wounded damaged prey needs to be pursued and finished trainers and hunters on épagneul and american brittany websites i ve researched pride their dogs on their ability to track tackle and bring back crippled quarry it seems to me i could sometimes work with her impulses rather than confuse her with aversion the live though presumably not well blackbird she dived into the leaf litter and pulled out was not killed but only shocked and winded it fluttered off apparently undamaged when tom took it away probably if i hadn t panicked and shouted when she did it so that she tensed and held on to it and had to be forced to give it up it might have fared better one day after her nerves were jangled and her mind distracted by coming across a number of hunters and their dogs whom she hates and reacts to with volleys of uncharacteristic barking and growling out and about i took her out on the terrace to brush her when i d finished and we turned to go in she broke away from me rushed over to the edge of the terrace where the birds feed and picked up a dead sparrow which i d not seen but she evidently had and brought it back to me in a perfect retrieve another time running around in a pasture some way from me she picked up something large and grisly looking instead of running at her shouting leave it i called and cajoled and encouraged her to bring it over which she did with some effort as it proved to be an enormous ancient thigh bone of an ox very grubby and much chewed lord knows what it was doing there she was a little reluctant to give it up but with much praise and laughter and lots of treats we sealed the bargain very cheerfully so i took it from her and led her away from it it often seems to me a rather wonderful and mysterious thing that we have this strange wild golden eyed creature in our home lying by our fire or on our couch eating from a tin and a packet snuggling our feet and soaking up endless love and affection while very visibly dreaming and enacting her dreams of flight pursuit bloodshed and mayhem a dog the like of which i haven t had before and the source of much joy as i ve said before i can do conviviality but seldom find it reassuring or conducive to complacency posted by lucy at 7 15 pm 7 comments labels elfie knitting ruminations rural brittany thursday january 05 2017 twelfth night three gifts the last red candle is burned the cards come down we eat the last piece of christmas cake with the last glass of very delicious aged port we skip breaking our teeth on the fève in the stodgy galette des rois but i m a stickler for the decorations such as they are coming down in time not for us moulting christmas trees sad bits of tinsel and other tawdriness hanging about into february thank you very much to end the season here are some lovely things made by others i had these cozy and beautiful booties and bonnet for christmas in fact i bought them myself early in december from soize s stall at the marché de noël at ploeuc sur lié near here it was a lovely stall loaded down with beautiful things she and bn had made and in fact the whole market was really very good i ve seen some truly dismal marchés de noël round here it must be said but this one made me think perhaps they really might be getting the hang of it it was cosy and bright with christmassy music hot food and drink and a good variety of nice merchandise however as she related the trade was pitiful not really worth the hours of time and work the stallholders put it and poor father christmas sat sadly up on the stage with no one to talk to obviously they don t quite have the hang of it after all at least not on the customers side but soize was typically cheerful and not disheartened i bought the hat and slippers for a fairly derisory price but at least i appreciate the skill and effort that went into them thinking i d give them away as presents but liked them so much i put them back in their pretty bag and passed them to tom telling him to give them to me on christmas morning soize told me to pretend to be surprised when this happened we didn t do much gift giving this year but as always there were parcels in the post from tom s kids m always sends us dvds which is a kind of interesting lucky dip sometimes they re turkeys we ve no taste for at all often as with sherlock and broadchurch they re revelations which we d never have thought to choose for ourselves this year there were three films they re more often tv series which we ve yet to sample a always sends her dad marzipan in various shapes and forms which is a safe bet and very kind as it weighs a ton k is more unpredictable her parcel this year was very heavy and turned out to include this little turned olive wood pot i ve always loved olive wood i hanker for a big lumpy unique pestle and mortar made from it but desist from getting one because it would really only be for its visual beauty we have a good working ceramic one plus a mezzalune and board and an electric spice grinder so it would simply be clutter olive wood also seems to have an emotional resonance a memory i can t quite pin down perhaps of objects shown by our kindly churchy primary school teachers as being from the holy land perhaps from the mount of olives itself handled and spoken of with reverence but fascinating to me then as now for their exotic rich grain and figuring this is perhaps palestinian olive wood too the base of the pot looks like a strange bird s head the loveliest thing about her parcel though and the reason for its weightiness was that it contained two substantial bags of whole cumin seeds she knew for tom spoke about it when the family visited while we were in lodgings in the summer that the stores of cumin and other spices many of which she had sought out and brought over previously were among the principal casualties of the house fire their interesting savoury aroma mixing with the vile fumes of burning plastics i remember noticing on waking and that he had felt their loss keenly k teaches english in england to people from all over the world and likes nothing more than trying new flavours and learning about how they are created and the finer and more obscure points of asian cooking are an area where she and her dad have often bonded the cumin seeds were an encouragement to him to start afresh and finally colin and li yi s christmas video for 2016 i ve still not ever met these two but feel as though i have as they ve been around in an exceptionally vivid way in the lives and conversations of my family for a while now they ve been sending me the videos ever since my niece forwarded me the first one and i ve posted them ever since i ve been getting them with the exception of last year s which i missed because we were in iceland i think and one year they didn t make one because they were getting married or something this one came a bit early because colin went off to malaysia where he and li yi came from originally and she came to my sister s for christmas much to everyone s delight there i gather now in london they live work volunteer at a soup kitchen and endlessly make endlessly beautiful things for a living to share and give away to do good in the world and simply for the love of doing so colin s website is here though clearly very digitally savvy he uses all kinds of very hands on low tech media architectural paintings done in coffee an earlier christmas video was made mostly using bits of pastry dough an other kitchen bits and pieces and a lot of these layered paper cut out montage things all done freehand with scalpels and a lot of loving patience i challenge you to watch this without getting a lump in the throat and without applauding its conclusion delivered without preaching but with typical humour gentleness and sincerity here s to 2017 posted by lucy at 10 31 pm 9 comments labels christmas family friends knitting videos saturday december 31 2016 air frost at new year this is perhaps my tenth new year post i ve not checked if i did one the first year it s something of a custom to commit to doing one i ve always been something of a party pooper about new year at the best of times often tending to a jeremiah ish mood and indeed these are not the best of times in many ways and it s difficult not to feel lugubrious and apprehensive about the year s to come on all kinds of levels from the personal to the global including the intersection of the two which i feel has a more ominous reality than it has really had for me before likewise on the personal and wider world spheres this has been a year of shocks and difficulties we have hopes and dreams of our own beyond the shock reactions and urges to flight after the fire which have calmed down somewhat yet the path to get to them looks sometimes steep fraught and uncertain as often i woke early after sleeping fitfully my body and its broken thermostat and other inner chemical workings playing tricks on me i could really do without lay with a lot of rather dreary thoughts and a few more cheerful ones counted my blessings backwards alphabetically one of a number of devices not quite sovereign but sometimes useful against insomnia and anxiety dozed a little and waited for the late late daylight when it came action affection tea and toast restored my spirits as they usually do and it brought what seems to have become rare and lovely thing as well as a heavy mist a glorious air frost and light of pink and blue and gold which prompted me to another rather unusual thing these days to get the camera out though these were taken from the comfort and warmth of the kitchen but elfie and i were eager to get out and get sniffing and looking the mist came and went and shrunk the world as it does so the road out of our village disappeared into oblivion but this is the weather that elfie likes and so do i in the frequent fog we ve had i ve been nervous about letting her off the lead as her usual running distance would take her out of sight but on this occasion i did and she always kept in sight and seemed to love the crispness underfoot and good smells the frost continued to form as we were out making fine filaments in the fur round her ears and at one point i put my hand to my own hair and found it stiff with ice too yet it turned to wet as soon as we got indoors again rushing in in vain to show tom the phenomenon many wonderful things have happened to us this year too as i m sure they have everywhere tonight it will be guinea fowl pie the last of christmas dinner and a dvd and i imagine we ll be in bed and asleep before midnight happy new year posted by lucy at 9 19 pm 16 comments labels elfie new year weather winter sunday december 25 2016 christmas day in the evening the rather jaded stage but it s been a perfectly good one as it usually is quiet of course we ve got the card sending and commensurate receiving down to about half what it once was i don t quite know how only a few people on the list have actually departed this life but lazy and phone averse as i am i actually picked up the device and made a couple of calls and received a couple more and felt happy to connect with the people on the other end in all cases in my somewhat frenzied bonfire of the vanities back on the summer i threw out all of our christmas decorations except maybe i kept a small painted bell k sent us one year if so but i can t remember where i put it this is something i find i don t regret at all we didn t have many but they had become a rather scruffy and slightly disheartening obligation i strung up the cards we did receiv...