As satisfying as getting the house finished is, I feel like a puppy needing praise for having done something unexpectedly well, which is stupid, as both of us are very happy with the home that we have created and don’t need approval from anyone else. Not to say that it isn’t appreciated, of course.
Our first house guest has now arrived and the madness of a 6-week road-test of all that we have done (plus that which we have yet to complete) has begun. The weather is beginning to cool a bit. Well, a lot if you’re accustomed to life in the tropics, as we are. I’m hoping that when the tail end of the remnants of Hurricane Bill have cleared the more northerly bits of Europe that we’ll be back to some better-than-decent weather, especially as we’ve so many guests arriving imminently.
The swifts have departed, much to Graham’s disappointment. They appear to have left for warmer climes. There are still a few house martins chasing flying insects in the airspace above the house, but nowhere near the numbers that we saw just 3 weeks ago.
Excuse me, I can hear the distinctive sounds of the recycling truck doing its early-morning rounds for glass, and there’s a box full inside the door to be put out. It’s much easier to let them take it than have to make a run out to the décheterie (recycling centre). So let me run downstairs and pop the box outside the front door.
Sorry, I interrupted myself. Where was I? Oh, that’s right ……. birds and things. We saw the coolest thing the other morning. We were standing on the terrace having coffee at about 7:30 one morning, watching the world wake up and a worker from the Commune undertaking some maintenance work on the cast-iron bollards that line the Quai de la Bréche in front of the house (all painted a fetching shade of hi-gloss French grey) when Graham spotted something in the river swimming upstream. “What’s that?” he asked. I wasn’t wearing my glasses so hadn’t a hope of seeing anything more than a blob in the water so I hazarded a guess at an otter (are there otters in the rivers here?) while I went to fetch the binoculars from the sideboard.
Closer inspection revealed what appeared to be a sanglier (wild boar). We had to wonder several things. From whence had it come? Why was it in the river, and to where was it trying to go? I called down to the man on the Quai, who was also watching this rare phenomenon, and asked him what he thought it was. He too thought it was probably a sanglier but also offered that perhaps it might be a small pig. As the snout of the animal didn’t resemble anything close to that of a pig, but did look remarkably like that of a boar we agreed that it was a sanglier. Sadly, we couldn’t consult with the animal in question to find out the where, how and why, so we watched him swim slowly against the current before giving up and heading towards the far bank where he stood a chance of getting out and back into the woods where he belonged. I hope he made it.