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

House archeology

Our new (old, 50s? 60s?/70s?) house is a maze of discoveries - some wonderful, some less so. From climbing about in the attic it seems as if the original building must have been a small barn or dwelling made of the local stone - Tuffeau', which was added onto at various times during aforementioned epochs. The electricians, on showing me a blunted huge drill, said it's extrêmement custo meaning blooming ek, it's solid, and not going anywhere - which is great news for us, less for them and their equipment.

During the signing for the place the notaire did mention something about a dispute between the owners before us and their previous owners do do with a pig and chicken outbuilding; no sign of it now but there is a large garage that dates back a long time, no doubt without planning. Talking of such a thing . . . these days to put so much as a new down pipe in you have to get permission, but this whole road including our house looks as if things just developed rather than being planned. 

There were apparently 32 windmills along this road, the area presumably covered with wheat fields not vines as is the case now. The vestiges of about five  mills are visible, and we have some very ancient garden walls which maybe housed one of the mills. When I've slowed down from painting walls and trying to arrange building works I'll go down to the archive office and enjoy poking about - love old maps!

    

             The reason why the windmills were up here - highest point around for some distance

An excellent DIY person and myself have been tackling the weird shower room/kitchen on the ground floor and its associated bedroom as I can see we'll probably need financially to start doing B and B again. Of course, in my mind I assumed this would take a day or two but during the house archaeology we have discovered prehistoric glue that refuses to come off under the vile plastic flooring, and hideous polystyrene ceiling tiles that I'd thought . . . yeah, they'll do with a good coat of paint, but they won't, and I remember my mother's daily occupation when we lived in a London flat years ago of re-gluing the various tiles that had gently spiralled down during the night. It's got to be wood which requires a frame, and so on . . .

It'll just take a a day or two . . .

Anyway, it'll all get done and one day the salon/hunting lodge will look great with everything back where it should be when I've finished the walls and the electricians have figured out how to rewire it . . .

temporary (sort of) chaos in the salon

What we knew before

It seems increasingly clear to me that we have lost our way as a species. Back in the era when this marvellous construction was in full function there were no computers, phones, Meta, TikTok, instant pancake mix, flights to Goa, plumbed in toilets, burgers, garden centers; Spotify, mega yachts, fast fashion, supermarkets, golf, Las Vegas, Youtube, this platform I write on; cars, internet shopping, yoga mats, Netflix, surf boards, and corrupt governments. Well, there would have been the latter, sadly that's just part of human history, but surely life must have made more sense?

People grew wheat, it was taken to the mill, each house or village had a communal bread oven; bread was made and sold or traded. The wheat was grown without chemicals or motorised transport and without destroying vast tracts of land. Clothes were made by hand or basic machinery; vegetables and fruits grown by each household if they had land. People knew how to make things -  baskets, shoes, saddles, roofs, carts, churches, goat pens, pottery, lace, knitted socks, bottled fruit, candles; and how to do real survival things like killing, skinning and cooking an animal, gathering plants - and knowing what was edible or not, fishing - without half a shop full of latest rod and tackle equipment - and a thousand other vital things.

No doubt this is highly simplistic and of course life would have been hard in many ways but a five minute glance through the current news seems to prove that we have learned so little in the last few decades, and lost so much. Thank the lord of handed down crafts that there are still some folk who know how to make and repair everyday and vital things, and rejoice in doing so. Hopefully as kids reach the age now of deciding their futures, basic and real skills will once again be offered and encouraged in this rapidly changing and climatically unbalanced world.

   

Hidden places

While trying to find an abandoned mine up on a hillside recently - as you do - me and the boy took a wrong turning and ended up on a gravelly overgrown track, the sides of which were lined with dismantled bicycles. It had to be worth further investigation, even with the risk of slavering dogs, or a slavering owner.
At the end of the track we came across a semi-derelict windmill and a huge rotting lorry, its inside full of everything from crockery, pans, hoses, sinks, to records, books, bedding, toys, furniture, dead plants, and more bike parts.



How had they got such a massive vehicle up there? And what had happened to the owners of the place? It was possible to see inside the windmill (I assume it was an ex-windmill) and there was a slight Mary Celeste scenario - plates and cups on the table, a stove with pans on it . . .
Feeling uneasy about trespassing, despite the place looking long-forgotten, I took a few photos, the weirdest being a picture of a decrepit Harry Secombe record in a wire basket along with many other long-forgotten English vinyls.



I often think about that place now as I drive along the main road and look up into the hills, wondering if all the stuff is still gradually decaying away up there, or perhaps someone has returned for the summer and is re-fitting the windmill with a shiny new Ikea kitchen - probably not.