Off line dating

Being a sentimental soul, especially around wildlife, I have been observing the behaviour of a solitary male house sparrow for a couple of weeks now. Having found his perfect nest spot in the wall of the tower that stands in our neighbour's garden, the bird stands/sits on a useful twig of dead wisteria just outside the nest entrance and advertises himself and the perfect patch of real estate non-stop. Ridiculous, but I feel sad for him. It looks like the ideal spot - sheltered, lots of wild grains and insects about, bird bath and ponds . . . no cats, quiet. I suppose he doesn't wake each morning and think, oh no, not all that cheeping again and standing mostly still on a twig for twelve hours, or, it's so not fair, all the other dudes have found someone.

I'd like to help, but short of netting a female and depositing her on the cill of the nest - which would no doubt not be in any way a good idea, and somewhat difficult, I'll just carry on calling out a daily greeting or two and send out a few hopeful vibes to him on his eternal mission.

   The tower, perfect nest building spot

Apparently the construction was a windmill for grinding acorns for tannin 

The only one on our road where 32 flour windmills once stood

What selfies are really for

Forget placing a view of the Eiffel Tower or the Grand Canyon behind you and smiling, all teeth on display, as if your life is 90% full of experiences like this. Try some real ones like me and the lad (influencers, not) on a freezing drizzly road trip with as many clothes on as possible, and a supermarket baguette sandwich. 

  

Rafistolage

A delightful French word for 'bodge.' Apparently the origins of the word bodge comes from a bodger, or wood-dweller/forest worker who would have been very adept at making things and making do, so not really fair to throw the word around to imply something cobbled together badly.

We are good bodgers, probably veering more to the derogatory sense of the word, but still with a certain skill learnt over time, and an eye for making things look good - from my years as a stylist working to camera - hence things look good but you might not want to look too far behind or round the back of said thing.

The weirdest part of our new (old) fairly weird but lovely house was the area we now jokingly call the East Wing, which was a sort of laundry room with attached small and grim bedroom. By squinting and using my imagination I could see it would work as a B&B - for more quirk-embracing folks.

About eight months on, some help for the more tricky bits and much trawling of junk emporiums we're pleased with the result, and have had our first guests who were delighted (phew).

The building and especially the afore-mentioned wing, rather resembles a long boat, and as we are at the top of the hill, overlooking the river which, in former times, would have been filled with flat-bottomed wooden barges transporting all the essentials into town, I'm thinking about naming the B&B: La Péniche sur la Colline, or, the Barge on the Hill.