Rien de Tout.

Again. I am now back to being bored half witless. But at least I still have the capacity to be bored.

What shall I do today? Feed The Birds. Feed The Dog. Feed The Cat Across The Road. Keep On Living. Otherwise they might all die. Actually I would rather sit in bed and watch reruns of Spooks but my Calvinistic soul won’t allow me to do this. I always have to have actually done something. God knows who inflicted this nonsense on me. No one actually needs to have done anything. Do they?

But I do get quite a lot of Lettuce from The Food Bank. I mean who eats Lettuce? I don’t. However, I have discovered that it isn’t far off Spinach if you cook it half to death with Onions and Garlic and stick it in what might resemble a Quiche. I also get a lot of eggs and a lot of Creme Fraiche. What’s not to like about that? So tomorrow I shall spend at least half of one whole hour doing that. It will take me the other half an hour to think about it. I do a lot of thinking these days. It helps to pass the time.

Don’t ask about Thursday. I don’t know yet. But there is always Spooks. And I can always plant a few more sprouting Potatoes from The Food Bank that are just sitting there sprouting. It is never too late to plant Potatoes. You just need to pay some attention to The Moon. But that is about alright at the moment. You just get to feel it, which is all that growing things need. A bunch of ugly, sprouting Potatoes that don’t want to die forever but need to be planted at the right time.

Friday? Forget it. I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.

After The Pardon.

That’s about it until Noel. Apart from The Old People’s Lunch, to which I won’t be going. Four hours on a hard chair is no longer possible for me, apart from all they French people who only want to practice their English these days. No chance of me practicing my French. What fibbers they all were. Their English was always much better than my French will ever be. Not fair. Okay. I just stagger on with four word sentences because I never got my head around Colloquial. Que? I only ever learned the real deal, although they all speak that as well.

And their pronunciation of The English Language is so attractive, while my pronunciation of French in my frightfully upper class English accent sounds like shit, even to me. Although I have learned to drop my aitches. But then I do that in English as well these days. Who needs an Aitch. England definitely doesn’t need an Haitch.

French will always remain the sound that I most want hear even if I can’t understand what they are saying.

Sans faire rein as opposed to San fairy Ann. The British soldiers weren’t all that far off.

The Perks.

The Perks have arrived. This is seriously not funny. A huge box of cooked vegetables which is currently dripping all over the floor. A slab of cooked beef and 12 bottles of cassis. There is more of his mother in Robin Dominic than first I thought. They were going to throw it all away and we can’t have that.

The dog can’t have the vegetables, too many leeks. And he’s not getting the beef. The cassis will keep. But I will likely have to spend most of tomorrow bagging it all up for the freezer. Not to mention the two hours I spent this morning sorting out and freezing the residue from the caldrons. Enough pie ingredients for a month of Sundays. But I have got to pay for more new doors somehow. I might have to buy another freezer, although Kate will have some of it. She is very good at beef curry. Can you curry leeks and carrots? Probably.

Everyone appears to have got rat arsed again today, but not me, I hasten to add. I am still recovering from sitting on a hard bench for three hours yesterday.

This has certainly been a very memorable Pardon. “Do you remember all they leeks and carrots?” Let’s hope they decide to spit roast half a dozen pigs next year.

O’Connor had another lovely time today. He is incredibly well behaved when out and about which has somewhat thrown me. And much more important than just pissing on the floor. There is so much more to Dachshunds than one might think. And what a joy he is.

The Day of The Pardon de Saint Rivalain. 2022.

5am and Robin Dominic has just gone off to light the fires under the cauldrons that will cook the beef for lunch. I have seen this all before over the years, but I had to laugh. Cauldrons? Fires? So how else are you going to cook beef in the middle of nowhere with 600 people expected to turn up at 13 Euros a head?

I doubt that Lann Georges and St. Rivalain together house much more than 50 people, so God knows where they are all coming from. Of old and before The Virus it used to be about 200. But we do have a reputation for putting on a good one.

O’Connor has gone with him again. It is really strange when the dog isn’t in the house.

Midday. and just off to The Jollies. Apparently the beef was frozen solid when it was dumped into the caldrons at 5.30am. All I can say is good luck with that one. Hopefully the carrots and potatoes will be okay.

5pm and home again after an excellent lunch. The beef was perfect and so were the potatoes. I am not a great lover of carrots. There were indeed at least 600 people present, only about half a dozen of whom I actually know, which was a bit disappointing. I can only hope that the rest of them aren’t dead yet.

They were just firing up the band for The Breton Dancing as I left. That is all way beyond me now, although there was a time when I was light of foot. The best to be said for it is that everyone links arms so no one actually falls over no matter how drunk they get.

Everyone was back into Kissing, thank goodness. I worried about that a bit. It is so much part of life here. Unnoticed most of the time, but you don’t half miss it when it isn’t happening.

10pm now and I can still hear The Breton Music. The die hards are still at it and will go on for a while yet.

O’Connor has had a lovely time this last few days, dear of him.

Full Moon.

Full Moon tonight. I’ve just Googled it. No wonder I have been feeling like shit for the past three days. But for some odd reason I never see it coming. It just creeps up on me.

This was not a good time for The Queen to die. Apart from my head going into shock I nearly ceased to function altogether. Fortunately. I have not felt much like commenting at all. And if I had it would not have been very nice. That poor, magnificent old Lady has had so much to deal with this last couple of years. My own family couldn’t even have come close. I have just sat and watched in horror at what Harry and Meghan have so thoughtlessly done to The Queen.

King Charles the Third? Who knows how he will deal with it all, although there probably isn’t much more to be done. The Queen quietly and competently dealt with it. And thank God for that.

The Sussex children are now Prince and Princess according to protocol and I don’t have a problem with that, although Harry and Meghan might.

Kate is now The Princess of Wales, which she richly deserves.

Meanwhile, O’Connor has gone up to The Pardon Field to help out with getting rat arsed or putting up tents. Not sure which. Robin Dominic should have taken him there a couple of days ago because O’Connor can surely dig a bloody good Barbecue Pit.

Long Live The King.

The Queen.

“The peace of my years in the long green grass will be yours and yours and yours”.

The Pardon. Part One.

We are now in the run up to The Pardon de St Rivalain where everyone gears up to getting absolutely rat arsed. Whoops, sorry. Everyone gears up to help with tents and barbecue pits and other relevant stuff. It’s the first Pardon in three years so it should be a good one. Or a bad one, depending on whose side you are on. Robin Dominic is taking a two week holiday from work so it could be either or.

I said that I will walk O’Connor up to the field, but I am having a rethink as he nearly had me over three times on the last occasion I walked him down the road a smidgen. He would quite likely just follow me but I am not quite prepared to risk it because I love him too much. Who needs it at my age eh! Little, long streak of Pelican Shit. Don’t ask. Something to do with Australia and a long ago Australian friend.

The Field Toilet isn’t looking good after three years. Good luck with that one.

The field will be mown shortly, if it stops raining. The Chapel will be cleaned and The Shrine will be cleared of brambles. But then that’s what it was all about in the first place. Quite a lot to do if anyone stays sober for long enough.

St. Rivalain remains a community.

Ireland.

Southern Ireland, that is. I am half Southern Irish. The rest of me is a bit of a mess, but then so am I.

A chunk of Welsh, although I can’t cope with The Welsh. They are all mad. My Maternal Grandmother spent her life in pursuit of the impossible. A sliver of Italian who are all over emotional. My Paternal Grandmother never stop crying so we never knew if she was happy or sad. A bit of Scots, but that is probably linked to The Irish. Mitchells you see.

Sad to say, I have never been to Ireland. I very nearly went there once, after I landed here in Brittany because I couldn’t afford even a hovel in Scotland or Ireland. But I just never quite made it. And hovels here were so much cheaper.

There is a Mitchellstown on the border of Tipperary. I would like to have seen that but never mind, it is too late now.

I never had anyone to ask you see, so I had to revert to History, which is long and glorious. I have just picked out the best bits of who I think I might be.

I was the first girl child to be born in several generations and I expect that none of them had much idea of how to deal with me. But I am undoubtedly a Mitchell and bloody proud of it. We are all far and wide these days.

Meanwhile, O’Connor is a German Sausage Dog and born in France. God knows how his French breeder came up with that one. They must have run out of “O” in the French year of the “O”. I was going to name him something else, but since he is something else I am so glad that I didn’t. He is the sweetest little horror story I have ever owned. He loves absolutely everyone and thinks that they all love him just as much. He has no conception of not being loved and never will have. But this is in his own soul. O’Connor is a rare thing.