Building number 40

Road diversions can be useful things if you are not too pressed and have an open mind about exploration on a non-dramatic scale.
Yesterday, Ezra and I set off for a day of exploration in Mazamet and Castres, about an hour and half East of the Hothouse.
Somewhere, in the deep woods of the Black Mountains (Les Montagnes Noire) we were diverted away from The D118 to a vertiginous route following the river towards Mazamet, (which I have just noticed while doing a bit of research, is home to a B and B that calls itself France's leading Bed and Breakfast . . . quite a label).
This route towards the town is listed on Google maps as being 'the route of factories' and was indeed littered with various breeze-block/corrugated edifices, some in a state of functionement, (if this isn't a word, it is now) others not, like this one with its gravity-defying chimney stack and angry Venetian blind.
I stood around and wondered, as I always do, as to when the door finally closed on the work-force and why nothing ever happened to the building afterwards.

Spring? in the Aude

Well, the world didn't end but I think the seasons definitely got put away in a box and taken out in the wrong order.
Today was late April here - 23 in the shade on the terrace, birds tweeting suggestively and crocus bulbs sticking tentative limbs from the soil. Of course it will all suddenly change into Siberia for a few days at some point - not exactly . . . it said on the news that it had been minus 50 there. Last year we had minus ten for a few days which seemed like two months. Anyway, whatever - it was stunning today and all the desire to be out in the garden reappeared resulting in a spring-cleaned woodpile and lots of weed removal.
This is the D118 to Esperaza, Quillan and eventually the coast. This bank of fog always hangs around the valley in certain weather conditions, rising from the river in billowing white clouds.