Mr Spanky stays indoors

I think I invented a new sport last week called gyro-skiing, where you career down the side of a snowy mountain in a gyroscopic fashion! I am not certain it will take off - not like I did anyway! Bruises were incurred. And, to quote Forest Gump, 'that's all I have to say about that.'

Wendy and I did have a great trip in the Alps though, punctuated by an overnight stop in Clermont-Ferrand, an industrial conurbation set in a valley in the Massif Central surrounded by volcanic mountains. Once home to the French Grand Prix, as you enter the sprawling city it is hard to ignore the fact that this is the birthplace of, and home to, Michelin Tyres whose factories dominate the suburbs. However, rubber is not the only black thing in this city as, nestled in its quaint ancient centre, with its cobbled streets and vibrant bars, stands a huge gothic cathedral built out of volcanic rock making the vast black structure appear rather macabre as its two spires extend over 100 metres into the sky. As for their rugby team, well this year's efforts would have been greatly aided if the goal posts had been of similar height, as the fabled yellow and blue jerseys bowed out of the Heineken cup in such embarrassing style that the whole town population were also wearing black to mark the occasion. We were allowed a moment of gloating as it was our minnows from Bordeaux who administered their dismissal.

Yes, of course, it is that time of year when large burly gentlemen pull on bright lycra and knock lumps out of each other in an organised fashion every weekend for a few months. Considering myself a multinational, I will inevitably be wearing my collection of white, blue and red hats throughout the Six Nations although so far it has started well when the Jocks have waved us Sassenachs off home, once again carrying the silverware with us. This annual bloodied encounter between England and Scotland always reminds me of an occasion some twenty years ago when a Scottish rugby playing friend of mine, known affectionately to one and all as the White Shark, was out celebrating a Scotland victory on Edinburgh's Princess Street only to demonstrate how best to take a drop goal. The solid silver Pilkington Cup still has the dent in it to this day as proof. And still he missed the target, although he was quite severely told off for the faux-pas!

We appear to have arrived back to monsoon season here at Chauffour, when 400mm of rain, nearly two thirds of our annual expectancy, has fallen since Christmas, much of it through a leaking skylight window into an array of buckets which require emptying every three hours. Thankfully lambing is not yet underway but it is imminent and we are considering relocating to higher grounds. There are even small trout in the puddles by the back door, not that Mr Spanky would notice as he hasn’t been outside for six weeks. Our lake that was bone dry up until New Year is now a sea and the polytunnel has concertinaed in under the weight and has become a 10000 litre reservoir, should we require it during the dry summer. Let's hope so.

In a recent interview I was asked where I grew up, to which the statutory reply is always the same, I haven’t grown up and have little intention of doing so! However, I did spend my childhood and teenage years in Rock village, when a gang of Fraziers, Notts, Neaths and Whitemans would tear around the lanes from pub to pub in our Minis, taking in discos on Clee Hill, games of spoof in the Alma and the odd fence post on the way home. Next day we would all be back at work, driving tractors or feeding yards of livestock, no harm done. Back then I can vividly recall Bernard Birch senior saying to my Dad, when they heard about the death of their pal John Whiteman senior: 'Jack, they are pulling them out of our pen now.' Well, with the passing of one of our crowd, Fooey Neath, I guess the cycle has just gone around again. A sorry thought, I suppose. RIP big fella, we had some good times.  

Anyway, enough of that; this column wouldn’t be complete if I wasn’t complaining about something and this time it is a simple gripe about the price of Muesli. Up until recently, this isn’t something that would cross my breakfast radar, but of late I have been making a gallant attempt to be healthy. Three euros fifty - that's over three quid - that's what it costs for a box of rolled oats and barley with a few raisins thrown in. I know I am no longer in the farming business but I still have friends in that game, each of whom assures me that a ton of grain sells for just over one hundred pounds. So how on earth does one company manage to pimp the price up to £6000 per ton and get away with it? On every news bulletin we hear that the world population is growing sideways and there is Jeremy Hunt talking about taxing sugar to keep us all healthy, and making sure we get our five a day. Is he missing something here, or am I? Well, yes I am actually, my bacon butties - but not for much longer.

Oh, btw, Mr Spanky is our cat, in case you were wondering!

A word with myself, by Andy Frazier

I had always wanted to write, that's probably an opening line that every writer, successful or otherwise, uses in interviews. Well, I was already a writer when I started to write, if that makes sense. Having somehow found myself in the computer industry, I firstly taught myself to write Visual Basic, a mathematical coded language telling computers to do real things. It was fun, challenging and, for some reason, I was quite good at it. Oh, and it paid well. After evolving in a business analyst, whatever one of those is, and commuting in and out of big cities in a suit, I got board of writing dull documents and yearned for the outdoor life I once had. Unlike many others in my plight, I took the plunge. That was 2006 and I was 45.

My first novel was the one we all have in us, based on life's experience, in my case about cows, or one cow in particular. Told through her eyes it was fast paced, humorous, heart warming and, as it happens, a rip roaring success. That is not to say it went global, but achievement is all relative and, after arrogantly punting my brilliant novel to a hundred agents, with no rewrites or editing, the constant rejection led me to go down the self publishing route. Pah, what did they know? There is a simple reason why this book sold a hundred copies in its first month, and a thousand in a year, 3000 in the next, and that was because I wrote it specifically for a targeted audience.  

Buoyed with the fact that writing novels was piss-easy, I had been told that this kind of work, talking animals etc, was more suited to a children's style. So, over the next year I wrote not one, but 4 more novels about the same animal, taking the dialogue down to the level a nine to eleven year old could read. I tested the books on a few classes of school children who all said it made them laugh and cry, the two essentials of any story. So back to the critics I went, sending samples and synopsis to every children's literary agent in the country, expecting to be hailed as the next Mike Morpurgo. The rejections were hard to take, some of which gave me faith in my skills, all of whom said the children's book market is flooded with great writers and new ones are hard to sell into that age bracket, especially about talking animals. They were bang-on, of course, but it still hurt.

No yet completely deflated, I had written a biography of my father, then in his late eighties, and given it him as a present. As a spin off from this I extended a story about him growing up during the war in our local town into another children's book and this one had a better reception. Getting great reviews from a dozen or so who trialled it, after just a couple of 'no-thank-yous' from the agency world, I again self published, and soon the copies started flying off the shelves in the local tourists centres. It even got a write up in the local paper and I did my first reading at a book festival. In my mind, it may be the best book I ever wrote. The interest waned after a year, probably due to my inactiveness to do any more promotion whatsoever.

Now back on the horse, I picked back up on my favourite subject, humour and animals, with a long and hilarious tale about a pig that kept getting into trouble. Hearing folks guffaw with laughter when reading you own words is a great tonic for any writer but, sadly, it was a difficult one to sell as it fell between two stools, they say, being neither quite children or adult genre. It still remains my favourite.

Another children's book was already underway, when I had tried to get some history on an ancient windmill which sits across the field from our house in France. When nothing was forthcoming, I made up a rip-roaring adventure about two boys on holiday there, complete with time travel, templar nights and, of course, cows. It took a while to write and I think that shows in the book's lack of enthusiasm, compared to my earlier work. To be honest, I didn’t even try to find a publisher and probably only 100 people have ever read it. They all liked it though, so they said.

In a bid not to confuse the boundaries of my children's writing, I then penned a couple of quite funny stories under a pseudo name about a poor confused man called Trevor Hard. I will admit reading a couple of Tom Sharp novels whilst on holiday blatantly influenced these two books and, although never doing justice to the master, they came out quite well. I picked up one of the very few printed copies the other day and re-read it in a day, laughing my socks off the whole way through. That is when writing is at its most fulfilling - a career that the great Terry Pratchett described 'the most fun a person can ever have on their own'. Anyone who ever reaches that goal of making themselves laugh time and again has made it as a writer, regardless of whether they have sold one or a million copies.

Along the way, the initial lesson of 'know your audience' kept haunting me and, after a time of procrastination based on failure, I picked up the keys again, penning something some of my old pals had been baying for: my own life story. Writing an autobiog can be as humbling as it can be smug but I was only picking out a certain era, that time that I spent in the cattle years, two of the best, friendliest, most rewarding and hilarious decades of my time on earth. The book, entitled In Bed With Cows, really hit the spot with a close nit crowd of cattle enthusiasts, many of them concerned that their own antics may have been spilled onto paper. It got dozens of reviews, made it into hundreds of Christmas stockings, and had lot of people laughing. Still does. Using a formula I had stolen from Nick Spalding, I wrote to the reader on a one-to-one. The book was swiftly followed by the more risky In Bed with Sheep but inevitably it was difficult to get sales outwith the close farming community and, let's face it, not many of them read anything other than the farming press. These books still haul in good sales around the end of each year but it was never any use trying to put them out to a 'real' publisher when my own life history needed to sit alongside the literary genius of supermodel Kate Moss or Tony Blair on the shelves!

After that I sort of gave up for a while. A friend persuaded me to write a novel for Nation Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo) in 2012 which I knocked out in 28 days. It was one of those that are great fun to write, where you have no idea where it is going and the characters develop themselves, some jumping out off the page screaming to take the lead role. Loosely pointing the finger at Scotland's bid for independence, I subtitled it a 'political satire, with some sheep in it, obviously!'. It is doubtful I will ever have as much fun writing again and equally doubtful that a half-man half-sheep riding a Harley through the hills of Scoutland will ever see the literacy light of day.

Deep Breath! Having written a column for a local magazine in UK about my life in France for the previous five years, something which I actually got paid for, some small publisher picked up on my blog and asked me if I fancied writing some travel guides about our area. In a simple formula, I sent them one 10,000 word ebook but then soon found their antics less than professional and that some of their other writers were being prosecuted for plagiarism. Just before I signed a contract with them, I decided to instead put the book out under my own banner, etravellers guides. Here was a chance to build a small brand and it got me to travel to nice places, eat loads of food and then write about it. The real win-win was that people actually bought my books, in their thousands.  OK, I only made a quid a copy but this was proper writing and great repeat business. In all I wrote ten and wish it had been a hundred. I vow one day I will complete some more, travelling around the world in a camper like John Carrowack.

I will own up to being nothing if not tenacious and here's the thing about tenacity. Once I found a little writing success, purely by chance as it happens, I got a phone call out of the blue to write something else. This time it wasn’t just a few words on the local restaurant and how clean the toilets were, but an entire history book, thick as a seam of coal, on my own chosen subject, cows. Even more importantly, I wouldn't have to market it, I would just get paid to write the tome, and then sit and sign copies at National events. Admittedly, in my excitement to agree the contract, I slightly underestimated the time that conducting 100 interviews, sourcing 1200 photos and writing 200,000 words into coherent factually correct chapters would take me, eg: nearly three years, but I did it. I fucking did it. And you know what? I don’t think it is over yet, because from that little job arose another one, this time a true story so far-fetched, it even makes sheep on motorbikes seem day-to-day. And, just for once, this one may have a commercial value.

New knees please

Well that soon went by. Not just the month, but the last ten years, which is how long it is since I left Britain’s shores to seek my fortune. I’m still looking! Yes, this time a decade ago I was heading to Amsterdam to live and work, something I did for 8 months before retreating to France for a bit more peace. I can’t say I really miss the place, Holland nor England, for that matter. OK, the beer and the rolling hills around my ancestral home do get me a little nostalgic from time to time but generally I am happy with my lot, and that’s all that matters. Each year sees a few more funerals but I suppose that is inevitable once you pass 50 and start spiralling towards the prospect of Saga holidays and incontinence. 60 is the new 40, they tell me, which I assume means 80 is the new 60 and I won’t see a penny of my government pay-off until I am four score years and five. Does this also imply that the Queen will no longer send out telegrams, or emails, or whatever medium they now use, until we reach 120? Oh well, it will save on the ink, I suppose.

Anyway, after three weeks of constant rain, the sun is shining here before breakfast at Chauffour, backlighting the sheep in a golden glow amidst a covering of white frost. On mornings like these it is hard to imagine anything wrong with the world. Long ago I stopped taking a daily newspaper and now I even refrain from seeking the news on TV or the Interweb, else it might spoil the illusion of tranquillity and satisfaction. Occasional news does filter to me eventually, via post, text or social media, the former about the financial problems, mine in particular, and the latter either about more funerals or what one of my cyberfriends is having for lunch. I will admit that Facebook and Twitter are an unwelcomed distraction from my busy schedule, which currently includes getting a 60,000 word novel out of my head and on to paper, after two years of cluttering up my mind. However, at present I am writing a true story about an American, which involves me looking up jargon online, only to be presented with adverts for things I bought for Christmas. Yes, the online marketing people are now so smart that they now know what I have been recently buying. Here’s a tip, Amazon. If I have just purchased some bath taps, a new pair of shoes, and some loft insulation, why the hell would I want to buy more of the same? Surely you would be better offering me some cheap paint and socks? Or better still, the services of a reliable plumber. Oh no, I forget, they are as mythical as unicorns and Boris Johnson’s hairdresser.

The reason for the urgency in my latest literary panic is that at the end of this month we are heading off to the slopes for a week and, following that, I have another stint in Scotland sorting out some business. Then comes lambing, a few month’s building work, the summer visitors, and all of a sudden it is next Christmas and the page is empty. As the confines of my desk allow me no more exercise than the shake of a wrist, and my ski suit doesn’t fit, I try and find time to get half an hour each day with the cross trainer. No I don’t mean Reme Garde – sorry, had to get an Aston Villa joke in somewhere – but a piece of apparatus that allows me to run like hell, without getting anywhere – a bit like Villa, actually (ha, that’s 2, Ed!). Only problem is, in an attempt to build up a few extra leg muscles that will carry my weight on the snow, I find that my knees are not getting stronger, but weaker. And they hurt like hell. After a word with a friendly doctor, I ascertain that the joints in my knees are, to use a technical term, buggered, and grinding them away with physical movement isn’t helping. A wee touch of arthritis comes to us all eventually, for one reason or another, and mine can be wholly attributed to years of kneeling down in cold damp sheds, lambing sheep. Damn things should carry a health warning!

Going back to my earlier point about online shopping, here’s one for you marketers: when I bought a new pair of ski goggles from lookwhatinicked.com, you could have checked my age and then offered me some new knee joints as well? Because that it is what it is coming down to, since all the doctors have gone on strike because they have been asked to work weekends, that we can buy pretty much anything prosthetic online these days and jump the 15 year NHS queue. I kid you not, there are dozens of websites out there pedalling everything from a plastic toe to a whole new abdomen. From a link alongside that, you can make an online booking into a clinic in Korea that, for the price of a London suburb, will fit the bits while you wait, a bit like that twelve year old apprentice outside Halfords who will attach your new windscreen wiper-blade for you.  Not only that, but with some pre-ordering, you can go green too when your new carbon foot print will actually be made out of recycled bits of Natalie Bennett, or Bono. It’s a win-win for everyone.  I’ve already got my name down for a new liver made out of Janet Street-Porter’s teeth!

A bridge too far

Seasons Greetings, Bon Noel, Deck your balls with prickly holly, etc...
 Currently we are still in East Fife, sheltering from yet another storm with an inexplicably stupid name that, according to the national press, is wreaking havoc across the country. Seemingly Brian or Eric, or whatever it is called has dropped 13 inches of rain in one day, although nobody could actually measure it properly as everyone’s rain gauge only goes up to one foot. It appears that the North West England flood defence was about as useful as England Rugby’s World Cup defence, but nobody really cared much because it was not in London where all the important people live. Dave ‘don’t-f**k-with-me-or-I-will-carpet-bomb-you’ Cameron did pop up to the sodden area and pull on his Hunter wellies for a few minutes where he patted a few locals patronisingly on the head, promised to send some rubber dingys, and then nipped into the Sheep and Garter for a pint of ‘craft’ beer.

Meanwhile, it is a boat that is also required here in Fife since the announcement that the Forth Road Bridge will be closed until further notice following the discovery that one of the nuts that hold it together was on cross-threaded. The government has now devised a plan which will take 150 PWC consultants two months to write down and a further year and a half to find the correct spanner to tighten the bolt. Currently those who voted YES in September, all 122 of them, will have a real taste of their Independence as their Southern relatives are unable to visit the area with Christmas gifts and they get to keep all their home-grown potatoes and oil to themselves. Unfortunately Amazon, the world’s greediest online supermarket, also has an eggy-face after it decided to locate its main distribution warehouse just north of the bridge so it can pay its s­­taff tuppence-an-hour instead of the English National wage. Obviously the book the SNP ordered online entitled ‘Bridge Repairs for Dummies’ now has to be sent by carrier pigeon, so should reach them by early February 2017. I cannot help but smile at the irony that currently the only way from Fife to Edinburgh, unless you want a sight-seeing tour of Glencoe and Ben Nevis, is across its old rail bridge, constructed out of Meccano over 100 years ago by men in flat caps. Based on this fact, while the old rail bridge made of steel is still pretty rock solid, but the road-bridge they built out of string in the fifties has now fallen apart, then I suspect the brand new one due to be completed in 2017 and made out of recycled cardboard milk-cartons will struggle to survive a decade at best!

Although we are due to head back to France in a few days I have gotten quite attached to the Firth of Forth which I can now happily gaze at while seated on the toilet. It may sound rather strange but it has always been an ambition of mine to have a sea-view from the kazi, so I can now add a tick in that box, since completing a new bathroom in the attic, which includes the original old Victorian bath in situ. I suppose I should apologise in advance to my neighbours, should they wish to spy on me with binoculars, and even more so to the one downstairs who got a warm shower when she opened her back door just as I was emptying the bath-water. Well I wasn’t to notice a cracked downspout, was I?

Anyway, I am a little hesitant about returning to the country we call home, not because of the frequent terrorists attacks on the French, but because we have a pandemic of Bird-Flu in the Dordogne, according to the Daily Mail, who are experts on such matters. As a consequence Japan, possibly the most paranoid nation on Earth, have banned imports of our local delicacy, Foie Gras, in case they contract the disease when spooning duck pate lavishly onto their morning toast. Despite being advised by Professors of Intelligence that implying they could catch anything other than gout from the product is like suggesting you could catch Mxyomatosis from Welsh Rarebitt has done nothing to quell their suspicions. So, now we will have to run the gauntlet every time we visit LeClerc supermarche of having some moustachioed fragrant peasant trying to sell us tins of the stuff at the door, before it goes out of date. Call me Mr Picky but, personally, I would rather French-kiss a skunk than eat the slimy mush that has been reared in such a barbaric fashion.

Finally I have to report that Louis the pointless-pointer – possibly France’s waggiest tailed dog – has made not one but two trips to the dreaded vet this week. Firstly we have a stomach bug, probable cause, eating too much seaweed; measurable outcome: well, let’s not go there! Then, during last weekend’s hurricane Norman, the garden-gate slammed shut, trapping and injuring his tail in the process. Poor thing has been in such pain and cannot understand why it hurts so much when he wags it. Trying to persuade an otherwise happy dog NOT to wag its tail is like attempting to explain to the gullible American electorate that Donald Trump is nothing more than a war-mongering racist megalomaniac who is out to tailor himself a pair of million-dollar trousers before you have time to say ‘oops, where’s all the cash gone!’

Bladders, stomachs and bowels

Driving rain, gusting wind, greedy seagulls, ah yes, we must be in Scotland again. Actually, that is a bit harsh as the ‘frozen north’ have actually had quite a good autumn this year, albeit that they pretty much missed out on summer completely! It has been a few days since we left balmy France by car; the wife, I and the dogs embarking on a 1250 mile road-trip via London and the Midlands to Fife with the windscreen wipers on the whole way,  all the while getting cocky texts and emails from our house-sitter who is basking in sunrays back home. Once again we pin-pointed the beautiful town of Rouen for an overnight stop, a place I never tire of visiting for its wonderful architecture, endless restaurants and fun student vibe. Just a peek out of the hotel window at that massive cathedral, the very place that they buried Richard the First’s lion heart, is enough to give you goosebumps, although the plaque that informs you his bowels were buried in a church 200 kilometres away was a bit unnecessary! To celebrate the occasion – of our visit, not poor old Dick’s disembowelment – I planted a tree. I have to admit that I am a more than a little mystified how I did this, but that is what the poster in my hotel bathroom announced: that if we only used one towel instead of two, and avoided running the hot water for more than 30 seconds, somewhere in the world a new sapling tree would be planted on our behalf. If one has appeared on your garden this week, don’t forget to send me a thank-you-note.

After running the gauntlet of our wheels being removed by ten thousand immigrants at the French port of Calais – where, incidentally we saw none whatsoever, but perhaps they don’t migrate on rainy days – we arrive in good old blighty and needed to take on some diesel. Normally I would do this in France, as it is 30% cheaper, but all the fuel stations near the border have all been suspiciously shut down, presumably to stop militant Syrians from refilling their petrol bombs. There is always a pivotal moment when the realisation that you are back in UK hits and this time it was when I pulled onto the forecourt in Folkestone to find that the pump wouldn’t accept my credit card. Eventually, after queuing in the grubby overpriced and overcrowded shop, the ten–year-old behind the counter informs me that ‘the pump is not broken, it just doesn’t work properly when it is raining!’ Well that will be nine months of business taken out of the balance sheet then?

Next up, London. A night out with my sons involves us ‘taking the bus’, something I am ashamed to admit I do extremely infrequently these days, and out comes my ‘new’ contactless credit card once more. Except it doesn’t work here either. ‘Excuse me!’, says I to the driver, sitting behind a sheet of bullet-proof glass. ‘This doesn’t work!’ Evidently the glass is so thick he doesn’t hear me as he fails to acknowledge my plight. In the interest of not stepping back out into the rainy street, I repeat the sentence continually with increasing intensity, but still nothing. On the assumption that London Transport’s latest policy includes employing deaf people, I revert to sign language as he stares straight ahead, emotionlessly. Eventually, as a queue stacks up behind me and the timetables starts to overrun, one of the passengers shouts out that the ‘driver is not allowed to talk to the passengers, mate!’ What? Did I hear that correctly?  You are kidding, right? Seemingly he wasn’t, as I discover that Boris Johnson actually has enforced a new policy of zero interaction between seller and buyer in a city that is becoming more and more impersonal every day. Whatever next? Will ‘cashier number 2 please’ at M&S be banned from asking me if I want my y-fronts in a bag? Or will I be forced into ordering a pint of Old Peculiar from a brail menu in the pub? Apparently, according to my reasonably well informed sons, it is so that London can fairly employ people who speak no English whatsoever.  And right there, my friends, hangs a rather sorry but inherent problem. Last one out of England, please turn off the light!

Thankfully my journey reaches its destination in East Fife in one piece, a world so far different from the south that we could be in another space-time-continuum. OK, it is still raining but even the rain feels cleaner up here. Settling in for a cup of cocoa and a wee dram, I flick on the evening news and all thoughts of relaxation suddenly take flight with the sea breeze as I am informed that one of Scotland’s national exports is under threat from yet more absurdity. Yes, that local pudding dish with the ‘wee sonsie face’ has been banned in USA because it contains offal. This from a country that lives on chocolate and burgers, the latter of which, let’s face it, contain just about everything except beef, including hooves, ground bones, sawdust and bottox, plus a raft of chemicals that would melt marble. OK haggis contains sheep’s stomach and a few other internal organs that you wouldn’t perhaps eat off a gourmet menu, but it has to be healthier than the god-awful junk food of an obese nation? Apparently the two countries are now reaching a compromise where America will accept the product if Scottish producers leave out its one vital ingredient, the lung. Presumably, from now on, all spare Scottish lungs will be sent to Westminster, so they can blow out hot air on debates that don’t concern them?

While on the subject of Scottish exports, I recently acquired a bottle of whisky called Ardbeg Supernova, so named as a cask of it has been sent by the distillery into orbit around earth to assess what impact the stratosphere will have on its flavour and taste. Some of the more cynical may dismiss this as a pretty neat publicity stunt but personally I believe offering the rest of the galaxy a chance to sample something so peaty and divine is a rather nice gesture. Continuing with this theme, Nasa have now backed it up by sending a pair of bagpipes along with the latest mission to seek out extra-terrestrial life. Now that really is a step too far, as the International Space Station disturbs millennia of space silence with the tuneless drone of yet more sheep’s bladder puffing out hot air through a loudspeaker. The poor Aliens will surely be throwing themselves on their rayguns when that row reaches their misshapen ears!

Oops, might need to flee back to France sooner than I thought!

Roger the rabbit

  Well the good news is I have lasted a whole year and still have a lovely wife, mostly by my side. Yes, believe it or not, it is now twelve months since Wendy and I got 'hitched'. To commemorate such a monumental achievement, we decided to take a week's holiday for some downtime in North Africa, where we could relax by the pool, sample local food and sup a few celebratory shandies. Hmmm. What we hadn't banked on was a drought. No, not through lack of rain, just the total absence of anything remotely alcoholic. In hindsight, on the day of our arrival in Marrakech, when we were met by hundreds of sheep riding around on motorcycles, we perhaps should have twigged that something was afoot? Was the circus in town? Had the Welsh taken a victory lap of the Mediterranean after beating England? Were they taking the Mickey out of my open admissions that 'I prefer the company of sheep to most humans?' No! It transpired that this was the eve of Eid, a national Muslim festival which is celebrated by firstly executing your favourite ram in public, and then taking a few weeks on 'the waggon.' To prove your worth to your neighbours, said ram gets to be paraded around the town the night before in a swanky fashion and what better way to display such booty than strap him on to the back of your Honda 50 and tear through the streets! The bigger horns he has, the better, as well as the more dangerous. I know this now but, had I gained this information a few hours earlier, we would have taken headlong into the nearest supermarket to load up our trolley with local wine and beer and thus quenched our raging thirsts before the alcohol section was barricaded up, for 3 bloody days! We did eventually manage to secure a couple of bottles of local plonk at twenty quid a pop by back-handing the hotel barman for some of his under the counter contraband stash. Apart from that we quite enjoyed the place with its crazy street traders all purveying knock-off designer clothes and sunglasses, as well as urns, potions, sandals, authentic jewellery, spices, wood-carvings and, for some strange reason, Nazi memorabilia, all at grossly over-inflated prices and mostly manufactured in China. I wasn't quite so enamoured with the hoards of tuneless musicians all blending in to one hullabaloo of white noise, nor the acrobats and snake charmers who collectively earn more per day from aggressively scrounging from tourists than the rest of Africa earns in a month.  A trip into the Atlas mountains was maybe worth it for the scenery as long as you were prepared to pay a small fortune to a licensed bandit to escort you up a perilously steep life-threatening rocky path to photograph a feeble waterfall full of litter, and then risk your wallet as you weaved through yet more traders peddling authentic tat on your way back down. Couple that with a 2 hour ride home in a taxi driven by Morocco's equivalent of Tommi Mäkinen along roads only suited for surefooted camels while trying to hold down a meal of rabbit tagine, complete with carrots, and we were quite glad to reach the sanctuary of a dry hotel!

    Anyway, our stint back home in France was short and busy, as we were met by guests arriving for our annual chutney festival.  The event was once again a roaring success only marred by the fact that Adele, my talented niece, rather than  pay Ryanair's extortionate baggage charges, had put her entries for the competition in the hands of the French postal system. Needless to say they never showed up on time, in fact, to date, they haven't showed up at all and are currently possibly festering in the corner of a warehouse near Brussels while the posties all sit around on strike. Oh well, at least it gave the other competitors a chance and I got two first prizes!

    As soon as the guests departed again, so did we, back to the land of the loch and the glen once more, as I try to cram in some work around our otherwise disturbed schedule. I will, of course be taking in some World Cup rugby, albeit without a red rose emblazoned on my chest. In fact I am a loss on who to support since that fateful day of demise of Les Anglais at the hands of the Wallabies. History would endorse the chances of the French in this contest and I may have to dust off my beret once more, but not before wearing a saltire flag and a flower of Scotland while their chances are still alive.   

Along with autumn, this month also sees the beginning of 'tupping' season, as we try and time our lambing to begin in early March next year. This week I am proud to announce the introduction of a new member to the fold, 'Roger the ram'. Except that we seem to have a minor problem in that Roger isn't, erhem, rogering at all.  You see I visited our neighbouring farmer and sheep-breeder in August and selected a new ram for our purpose, assumedly purchasing it on a handshake on the understanding I wouldn't require it until October. However, when I returned this week to collect the thing, he had chivalrously sold it to a higher bidder. Of course, as I took him to task on the issue, us being gentlemen and all that, he just offered me an indignant shrug and a undersized ram-lamb as a replacement. When I say lamb, poor Roger is barely out of short trousers as he bewilderedly wonders towards the ewes to say hello, totally sexually unaware, and they run away laughing.  Even the Daisy-the-harlot isn't interested in what he has to offer and she isn't usually backwards in coming forwards on such matters. So all we can do now is play a waiting game and hope that Roger-the-younger grows up into Roger-the Rogerer sometime soon or it will 'rien à manger' for us on the bbq next spring. Maybe I should take him to a rugby match, as a mascot, to witness some real testosterone being flaunted? On the back of my motorbike, obviously!

Flip-flopping hell!

And breathe! At last I can hear the sound of silence as the final few guests departed this morning – not before helping me stack 5 tons of winter logs, I grant you – and we get a moment or two of peace and quiet for a few days. When I say a few days, it is actually barely that, as we head south to visit a few friends this weekend, inhabitants of Rock village, as it happens, and then I have to zoom off to Scotland to sort out some issues. But during those couple of days at least we get chance to listen to music we like, eat whatever and whenever we fancy – or nothing at all - and know which bed the dog is sleeping on! I have to admit I do like having guests here and this year has seen a wide variety, from youngsters just climbing onto the hamster wheel of life while others, such as Scott and Sally, who have recently had a eureka moment and exchanged the rat-race of international commerce for a trip around France in a sports car with the intention of finding themselves a new vocation. Together, the whole ensemble represents the rich tapestry that carpets the hallways of human kind – and sure breaks up the boredom.

Obviously, I use the latter word in jest, as being fed up with doing nothing has never yet made it on to my radar. Just when I think I have the decks cleared enough to tie up the loose ends of our existence, along comes yet another opportunity as a leafy avenue opens up, tempting us back down the rabbit hole. This time, a chance meeting with a Kiwi has somehow advanced me to a new role of advisor to one of the world’s richest men. No, I am not educating Mister Well-known Un-named Russian Billionaire on how to make more money but on a subject I have a little more knowledge about – sheep! Having bought a most idyllic chateau near here a few years ago, this chap now produces one of the finest and most expensive wines in the region. It transpires that one of his close friends and business partners own a vast estate in Perthshire, Scotland, and for my client’s 45^th birthday he sent him a ‘wee pressie’, a flock of Scottish Blackfaced ewes. Now I have seen a few blackies in my time, mainly through binoculars, as they tends to live at 2-3000 feet up on a mountain, contentedly munching on heather in a climate that ranges from driech drizzle to out-and-out hurricane. So you can imagine how these 40-odd gimmers may have felt when they are unloaded in the middle of a birthday party in full swing, to 40 degree heat, little or no shade and not so much as a peat bog in sight!  However, hardy and adaptable as these creatures are, they have settled in over the last few years and my client is now looking to produce some premium quality lamb to sell alongside his grand-cru-classe wine. Enter yours truly, via a recommendation from a friend, as we try and put together a project plan to turn sow-ears into silk-purses via introduction of new bloodlines, a truck load of stock from Scotland and some quite intricate data recording. Shh, don’t tell the tax-office but payment for such professional guidance has been agreed in liquid format! Eureka indeed!

A few years ago I mentioned a bad experience I had with Ryanair about being forced to put my sandals on for landing and take-off, something which still mystifies me to this day. Well it seems the French government is now endorsing yet another absurdity, that of not being allowed to wear flip-flops whilst driving a car; this outlawing just about every single person behind the wheel, including myself. However, after doing some basic research, it appears that this idiotic ruling is not legally enforceable as long as, if pulled over, you can prove that you are able to be in perfect control of your vehicle, able to use your mirrors and indicators, drive at a sensible speed and be courteous to other road users – which, let’s face it, rules out all French drivers anyway!

Some may recall that, as a day job, I write books for a living and that I am midway through penning the history of the Aberdeen Angus cattle breed; a project that has taken over 2 years thus far. The creation of such a tome was the brainchild of the breed’s chief executive who had the realisation that some of the older guard were starting to disappear from this earth, taking their memories with them. For over a year I toured the country, tackling  some of the older members with a tape recorder to capture snippets of information for eternity. I am therefore extremely saddened that the very man who gave me this opportunity passed away himself this week, aged just 64, and that I never took the initiative to actually hear his own story and, moreover,  that he didn’t get chance to see the fruits of my labour.  History is a strange thing, isn’t it? One thing is for sure, we might be able to document it, but we sure can’t change it.

On a lighter note, I have a couple of appointments with large stadia in the headlights over the coming months. The first is that spectacle of sport, the Rugby World Cup, an event which Wendy and I have engaged in every 4 years over the last decade and more. This time, the hosts, England, have managed to price us out of the ticket market for their home games, with basic tickets costing upwards of three hundred quid a throw, but we will be making the trip to Newcastle to see Scotland playing those rather animalistic Polynesians, Samoa. For the trip I will dust off my saltire woolly bonnet and show allegiance to my wife’s country of origin, although I am not sure I will be putting a bet on their survival. Allez les Blanc!

Then, just a few days later, it is a short trip to Bordeaux to see one of Britain’s finest exports, that aged rock band, Deep Purple. Yes, against all odds, a few members of the original line-up have remained pickled enough to still perform such gems as ‘Sweet Child in Time,’ ‘Speed King’ and ‘Smoke on the Water.’ The excitement of it all has even provoked me to un-mothball my own guitar, plug it in to the mains and give it some welly – if only to an audience full of bewildered sheep. I can even remember the words to the latter – “dan dan dan, dan dan de dan...” Come on, you Rockers, sing along now!