The rue Veille du Temple

The rue Vielle du Temple, particularly at the top end, would have to be one of the nicest streets to walk down, or, rather, it used to be. If the street itself wasn't pretty enough, and just gently winding enough and downhill enough to make you feel good, then the fact that any number of huge carved gateways might open to reveal a closed and maybe more serene world inside a courtyard, would. The rue Veille du Temple is home, after all, to the gardens at the back of the Picasso Museum, all little box hedges and jumped-about-on lawns. The street has wider bits, at the top, and narrower bits, at the bottom. It has a good choice of cafés. There is one little café where you can stand at a zinc counter in the shape of a horseshoe and people say 'Goodbye Monsieur, Madame' when they go out, to everyone. But here is the thing that has changed. The upper end of the street used to be all modern art galleries. From one week to another things were different, as one exhibition changed to another. But when I walked down yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I discovered from the top end of the street to the bottom, one long shop of up-market fashion, all the galleries gone. Floaty, pretty things that cost a fortune, fill every window. No doubt the art cost a fortune too. Even it is less useful, more elitest. And yet, living near the top end of the street, as I used to, and setting out on a walk on any kind of day to get somewhere or do something, you knew that if you wanted you could just push open any of those gallery doors, and gaze a while, and find in a quiet whitewashed space something, as the French would say, to 'change your thoughts'. It was great.

Suddenly I have all the time in the world. The little monkey is at his 'Classe Verte' all week. Today, being Wednesday, normally he is at home all day. I calculated, one hour and a half for the speech therapist this morning, about 10 minutes getting his clothes on and his teeth brushed to get him ready, another 10 minutes (at best) to get him to eat his lunch and then two return trips to the place where he does sport - about 20 minutes there, 20 minutes back and a good five minutes in between each time, so an hour and a half. Then getting him in and out of the bath and his story. By his not being here, without answering any of his questions even, I have saved about four, or four and a half hours! This means that the elder monkey has not had any one to fight with too so no sorting out squabbling time either. Virtually all the things I was stressed about not having done I have miraculously accomplished in between refreshing cups of tea. Not once has he called out 'Mummy look!' while he does a little cartwheel or does jumps on his skateboard. I have not had to stop what I have been doing once to get him to stop playing wildly with Toffee. I miss him dreadfully apart from that nagging feeling that if he wasn't around much longer I'd start having to do something worthwhile, or heaven forfend, useful, even .... Whereas, all those hours normally are just given up to loving him. So multiplying up, you could say, what a lot of productivity there is lost in the Western world, people like me who could be producing a lot more. Alternatively you could think, wow, one of France's greatest 'products' is the nurturing and loving of children, and, all the love that is given back to those lucky enough to do that nurturing, in return.

A round "vegetable" garden

Crouched on one terracotta tile 'stepping stone' or another for a couple of hours pulling out weeds makes you realise what it is that makes people conform. Why not simply have a rectangular vegetable garden, if vegetables is what you want? The weeds would slip out with a simple tickle of a long handled rake between the rows and I would be sitting back admiring my "work", with a good book. Or indeed, like my neighbours, I could have such a huge vegetable garden I wouldn't even sully my hands with a rake. I would plough it all with a bulldozer and never darken the doors of any supermarket selling second rate veggies for the rest of time. My thoughts about the garden, so rosy, last year, its first, get darker. The tomatoes were still green when the first frosts came, I had to give away all my huge "frisée" lettuces for pretty much the same reason: it was virtually winter and I was too cold to eat salad. And the courgettes were really quite few and far between. One friend saw my solitary pumpkin and asked me if I had ever tried fertilising by feather. And so, guess what, I had decided this year to make the vegetable garden a slightly bigger circle in order to put in a couple more pumpkin plants! and as I see it now, pull out more weeds, or discretely pop in a few more flowers, so it is pretty, at least.

So there is a circle of sunflowers growing around the scarecrow and round the garden, as if drawing the design of a ball, there are trails of yellow marigiolds to keep creepy crawlies at bay. In the middle of the vegetable garden there is another circle of dahlias and there is now a little cone of sweetpeas. In a few weeks the sunflowers will be so tall there will be a lot less room for the weeds and none at all for any ideas of popping in an extra lettuce or two for the slugs. And now, I don't even need to. My neighbours, not surprisingly, have had great results from their bulldozer. They have just given me two of the most wonderful lettuces, already grown. Amazingly, it was our little round plot that got them started. And even more amazingly, we already have little tomatoes growing. They might even ripen before Christmas this year!

Driving along the roads, or biking along the tracks the tractors use, around Maisons les Chaource is like finding oneself in the middle of a vast paint box. The fields are huge : one giant wedge of green or gold gives way simply to another. With no hedges to get in the way the colours come right down to the road or the track. At this time of year when everything has grown so tall it seems you are almost floating in colour. So when after the fields you arrive at a little wood each tree trunk seems special. The pink trunks of the pines stand out from afar, but on foot all the different shapes of the different trunks and the different leaves of the trees and bushes is marvellous. It's as if you had never seen anything so varied, minute and lovely. And the village, when you get back to it, is also charmingly little as if you had just flown into it, off a plane.

Gunshot by the pond

There was the sound of gunshot, very close. It was a quarter past eight on Sunday morning and everyone else was still asleep. I looked out towards the pond where I thought the noise must have come from. My neighbour was also standing just inside his gate, watching something, but not really showing himself, and not waving at me. Then he retreated, with a very long rifle in his hands. Some time later, after the noise of screeching birds had died down, I saw my neighbour's wife standing at the edge of the pond, looking down at something. So I went over and found her with a half baguette and some home grown lettuce thowing it out for the mother duck and her ducklings in a cheery way. I asked her about the gunshot. Since last night, she told me, sadly, there was one duckling less. My neighbours had been by the pond last night and had seen the tenth duckling standing innocently on the lane when a crow had swooped down and munched him up, body first, head afterwards, she explained. The gun was for the crow. "My husband got him" said my neighbour in a relieved, surprised tone. Since when I can't help thinking about the poor, black, mean-looking duckling-gobbling dead crow. Straightforward bird preservation might extend from fluffy brown and yellow ducklings to big black crows and their families, whatever their eating habits. So could this be a French version of a Sandy Whiskered Gentleman? And who (since there are still nine ducklings) might be next?

It's as quick an escape from the grubby business of real life as holding onto a kite and feeling yourself in the sky. Standing by the pond you can just glance up and watch the swallows circling and dipping or the ducklings or the dragonflies or the people fishing. Sometimes there are herons or a kingfisher in amongst the bullrushes. The pond is just large enough too so that you can see someone the other side but not really hear what they might be saying. You need to wander over to talk to them or see how many fish they have caught. Just before lunchtime the Bread Lady hoots her horn round the village, and then there she is in her clapped out white van turning the bend, arriving at the first house coming up to the pond, tooting now at a deafening level. She would stop at everyone's house delivering baguettes as she goes but often as not, everyone has gravitated to the same spot. It's very easy to talk, after all, when you are watching ducklings at the same time. You wonder why more ponds haven't made it into inner city suburbs.

There is no smell of polish in the church in Maisons les Chaource and not one single knee cushion with nice tapestry on it. The walls are whitewashed and damp, the staircase up to the little balcony over the door has a handwritten notice announcing 'DANGER', and there is nothing apparently of any note apart from"30"!!! old sculptures, naiive, charming and so high up you can hardly see them. The stone floor is a bit worn in the doorway and the sun floods in. It is tiny, dead simple and utterly lovely.

They could all fall off in the rain tomorrow, or get battered by the wind, but for the moment they are there, abundantly, roses everywhere. Crazily overgrown into the bargain, the garden looks like something out of children's book when the children clamber over a fence and find something magical. The greeness will disappear as soon as it gets hot. But now it is perfect : elderflowers in the hedge, buttercups as high as a child in the long grass, and the scent of the roses beckoning you, as if a bumblebee, this way and that to see what lies a little further on. It's just the beginning of the summer. Everything, you feel, can still happen.