Ex Pats.

Of which I am one, although it has been a long time now.

Some are really okay, and some are effing awful.  And I have had a bit too much of the latter kind of late.  Not that it matters all that much to me personally.  I am an old hand at that game.

But my youngest son turned up here a bit back along, and in some distress.  Nothing much to write home about.  He will be okay, because I said so.  And it was just the same old same old anyway.  Anyone who is a parent has been through this.

However, suddenly, the worst of these people saw fit to put him down.  Not ever directly to me.  They circumvented me and read him his fortune.  He is a waste of space.  He needs to grow up.  He needs to get a job.  In other words, “Go home.  We don’t want you here.”

Mind you, I do have a bit of a plum in my mouth.  And suddenly I have produced proof that it isn’t just me.  He is well educated, and erudite and with the same ghastly plum, although he does try to hide this.  God alone knows why.  Meanwhile, most of them can’t actually string a sentence together in English, let alone French.

Me?  I take any old rubbish.  I don’t fall out with anyone for my own sake.  But they have made a very serious mistake on this occasion.  Don’t ever attack any of my children because I am lethal.  It might take me a minute or ten, but I will wipe the floor with them, and they won’t even see it coming, or perhaps even know why.

I simply don’t understand unkindness.

Autumn.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

So, I’ve been making loads of Chutney.  Apples and Peaches mostly, although the Quinces are coming along fine.  Quinces are vastly underrated, perhaps because they are small, very hard and very fiddly, but they are so worth the effort.

I boil them to mush these days and then sieve out the juice, which I then boil again with loads of sugar.  And such a very pretty pink jelly you get.  The taste is something else.

Next will be the Chestnuts.  And I have bottled a few of those in my time.  They are currently fetching eight Euros a Kilo, while they lay on the ground around here just for the taking.

Not an abundance of Walnuts this year, but they run in cycles.  Next year will probably be better.

No Cob Nuts at all, so I expect that the Squirrels are back.  We still have Red Squirrels here, so that’s okay.

Another Summer gone and Winter isn’t very far off, but I have loads of wood to burn, mostly foraged from somewhere or another.

Thank you, God, whoever you might be.  I do so love this place.