en vacances

We have just returned from our holidays in southern France. We spent two long weeks lazing at the poolside, escaping the blistering heat in the stony coolness of cathedrals and cloisters and with daily ice-creams. We walked through sleepy, dusty villages and in the evenings, when the air cooled just a fraction, we walked in the countryside watching leaping hares in the dusky fields and listening to the nightly owl calls accompanied by the constant music of the cicadas. We visited the bookshop town of Montolieu, buying maps and Le Petit Journal from the turn of the century, haltingly and blushingly speaking French. We lingered in the brocantes and bought thimble-sized glasses for winter drinks of sherry and port. We read all our holiday reading, ate croque monsieurs et frites at outdoor cafes and generally basked in the heat until... until that barely perceptible twinge, that pull, that siren call and then we were all looking forward to going back to Ireland. And yes, it's raining here and yes, the fire is lit and there's an autumn feeling to the air but we are home.

beach

Sometimes those impromptu beach visits are the best. It was a non-raining day so we decided to make the most of it and head to the sea. We put together the easiest of picnics, including a flask for tea-making on the beach (I love a nice cup of tea outdoors!) and off we went. We don't live too far from the sea and of course it being a warmish but overcast Irish summer's day the beach was empty. And the tide was out so that meant lots of sand, a few puddly bits and rock pools for toe dipping and acres and acres of space to run around in...bliss!

July reading

Well, that was a bit of an unintentional holiday from blogging. We'd no internet for days, days I tell you and so instead of spending time on-line reading and generally nosing around in other peoples' lives I have been forced to spend time with my husband, my children, my friends, my laundry basket and myself and oh, what a relief it is to find all is working in the www.world.com again.

I did however use the time to do some reading and am well through my book for July Marking Time by Elizabeth Howard. It's the second in the Cazalet family series and picks up where the first book left off, so now the family are in 1940 and the reality of war is starting to bite. It's perfect for this time of year when having a book that you can pick up and put down, as children demand, is needed. It's also fairly much character driven so there's no pesky plot wranglings to deal with if you have to leave it for a day or two. I'll also be reading The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair from Persephone Books. So those are my choices for The Year in Books  over at Circle of Pine Trees.

june

Oh June! You have given us days at home and days out, a garden bursting and preening in its own loveliness, you have given us toasted marshmallows, embers of countless barbecues, school holidays and report cards, suncream and the seashore... you have also given the dogs fleas but the less said about that the better...

wonder

Dear friend, yesterday we walked the other hills at Loughcrew, a special place, sacred, barely seen. You visited when you were with us last summer, I think you climbed to the other cairns and we followed in your footsteps a few days later. These hills, yesterday's hills, are a steepish climb and there are gates to be very ungracefully climbed over and barbed wire to negotiate but we got there and the landscape, the peace and that sense of time and history and endlessness batters at you as the wind there does and leaves you breathless. Of course our boys relished the freedom of all that open space and when I'd got my breath back I stood and heard the roar of forgotten voices and wondered at it all. Wondered at the people who'd lived here, farmed here, built here, worshiped here, died here. Over five thousand years of time. Five thousand years of wind and rain, sun, snow, the ceaseless turning of the earth and all our follies, our wars and celebrations, our planting and harvesting, all those beginnings and endings. Oh, how I wonder.

 

rena gardiner

This arrived in the post this morning. I'd read about Rena Gardiner here and here and I immediately followed Mr. Pentreath's advice and bought a copy of the book (Little Toller Books produce the most gorgeous books, really anything from them is just fantastic) and I'm so glad I did. She was a prolific and wonderful book maker, printer, artist. I am looking forward to later on this evening when all children are in bed and I can lose myself in her wonderful work. 

fields

How close are you to a plain, open parcel of land marked off for cultivation? We are surrounded by them. Vast ones opened up for dairying, small ones enclosed by dense bird packed hedges, ones which lead on to others, a patchwork across the countryside. At this time of year the urge to be in them is strong. The grass has been cut for silage, leaving dry golden stubs. It is surprisingly satisfying to walk in a field which has just been cut. The smell is subtle, herbal, green. The boys throw handfuls of dried grass which the baler missed at one another and roll down the gentle slope of the field. Within a day or two there is a greenish tinge to the field ~ growth is continuing, a second cut is inevitable before summer is out.

Field names are so interesting, a lyrical intangible finger of the past pointing to something gone. With farming changing so rapidly and small fields and their hedgerow boundaries under continuous threat, it makes sense to record these names before they disappear. Names can be prosaic meadow field, river field, hill field, some relate to size the ten acres, or their use cow field, turnip field, milking field or, of course, they can be in Irish, or reflect the field's geography or its owner. The boys are forever drawing maps of places, real and imaginary, perhaps we should map our local fields, find their names before it's too late.