Living in the middle of nowhere has one great advantage - we hardly ever get colds. But the downside is that whenever I go abroad in the winter months... the cold germs set upon me the moment I reach the first big town. This time I thought I'd try Echinacea but the combination of train germs, Parisian metro germs, Dublin germs and aeroplane germs were too strong and I've been coughing and blowing my nose for three weeks.

On the plus side, the lambs are all doing well. We've had to feed one of the triplets who wasn't getting as much milk as her sisters. But she's now caught them up in size and speed. It's amazing to see nine day old lambs leaping off the top of four feet high boulders.

Then there was the donkey... We thought we'd do a good deed and arrange for our blacksmith to trim the feet of a donkey that's being kept on one of our neighbour's fields. The donkey's feet were terrible - so overgrown he couldn't walk right. So, on Saturday we set off to collect him, walk him back the half mile to our stable where he could have his feet trimmed without dragging the blacksmith all over the field.

As usual it started off fine. Shelagh caught him, slipped a headcollar over his head and led him out the field. The rest should have been easy as previously he'd been easy to lead. Then he saw our horses and everyone got excited. Our two horses whinnied and galloped and the donkey bounced and brayed. And turned, suddenly, setting off towards a track on the side of the road. A muddy track. Shelagh tried to pull him back, failed and fell over. And ... refused to let go of the lead rein.

There was some dragging - of the horizontal, stomach surfing kind. Mud was involved and at least one puddle.

Ten minutes later we managed to get the donkey into the stable. Not so good news about Shelagh's coat - which was drenched and slightly ripped. But cue happy ending. The donkey can now walk properly and Shelagh gets to buy a new coat.

Finally - and just to show what an action packed week it was last week - there was the stampede. Another of our neighbours was moving his young cattle from one field to another and, to do so, he had to use the road that adjoins our fields. This is not usually a problem. The road has little traffic and the farmer has his family at the front and back of the herd to keep order.

And what order - never had there been such a well-behaved herd of cows. They formed an orderly line, two abreast, ambling slowly past.

Until Saffron - our almost 17 hands French Trotter - saw them. She's fascinated by cattle and gets excited. And when a giant excitable horse gets excited, they get Excited with a capital E. She stopped what she was doing - eating large amounts of grass - and charged out of the woods.

This had an adverse effect on the young cattle. One, they hadn't seen Saffron before as she'd been hidden amongst the trees. Two, she was galloping towards them at great speed. And, three, she had a large green beard - a clump of grass that she'd torn off ready to chew before the cattle fever struck.

Stampede! The road was turned into Pamplona with fewer people and more cattle. Humans jumped into ditches, called out, squashed themselves against hedges. Cattle ran and bucked and bellowed. Saffron galloped, bucked and farted.

Luckily the stampede didn't last for long as the herd turned into a track away from the road and once out of sight of the terrifying green bearded monster they calmed down. Equally luckily was Saffron's clever green-bearded disguise. Because of it she's unlikely to be picked out of a police line-up:)

Tags: cattle, donkey, horses, lambs

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A Woolly Kitten's Guide to Disguise	Mar. 21st, 2007 @ 12:58 pm

This week's kitten's guide looks at extreme camouflage. Of course today also happens to be Human Fool's Day in the kitten calendar (as in most things kittens are 11 days ahead of their bipedal friends)

So, first up we see Xena cunningly disguised as a lamb (or maybe the rock - she is an expert) and Kai as her mother. Kai, always the martyr to his art, had to take on a lot of extra bulk for this role - which meant extra meals and snacky things, and a course in reverse liposuction.

'How is it done?' I hear your say. 'They look so lifelike.' To which the answer is - hours in make-up. The trick is to start off by using a fishy-flavoured foundation - always popular with the fashion minded kitten - then move on to the latex mask and the woolly jumper.

Talking of woolly jumpers, here's Kai disguised as another lamb playing King of the Castle on another rock - or is it Xena?

Here we see Saffron, our French Trotteur, coming over to watch the shoot. Xena, being a small animal, does what all small animals do when loomed over by a much larger animal. She pretends not to notice. Kai, on the other hand, unsure about Saffron's views vis a vis fishy-flavoured foundation, decides a hasty retreat is the thing to be beaten.

And just to show that none of the above pictures were faked, here's Kai disguised as a pop-up book from Amazon.

Remember, kittens, you only have until twelve o'clock noon to make a fool of your human. After that it's down to them.

Tags: cats, guide, horses, humor, humour, kai, kittens, lambs, pets, sheep, xena

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Crime and Poetry: Part Three (The Dream)	Jan. 19th, 2007 @ 10:21 am

It's September 1995 again. We'd just survived eight months in France and then this happened. Someone stole my identity and grabbed our life savings. 'Why did I have to invest all our money in the stock market?' I wailed to myself. The answer was, of course, the dream.

Although some might call it a vision. It was July 1994 and I suddenly awoke one morning with the certain knowledge that the London Stock Market had reached its bottom. From now on, my dream informed me, it could only rise. Whether this came from God or His financial adviser, the dream didn't say. But what I did know was that after years of non-profit dreaming, I was, at last, given something I could use.

Well, that's not exactly true. I'd had a vaguely similar dream when I was seventeen. That time I dreamt that a horse called Hatherop was about to win a race. Which was a pretty strange thing for a seventeen year-old to dream about, as Hatherop was neither a famous horse nor a name that readily tripped off the tongue. I awoke in a sweat and ran to find the morning paper, almost tearing the pages in my anxiety to find the racing pages.

Incredibly Hatherop was running that day and priced at 16-1. That afternoon I stopped off on the way to school and placed everything I had - four shillings - on Hatherop to win.

He didn't.

My faith was destroyed. What was the point of a shoulder tap from the celestial racing correspondent if the information was duff? And I'd lost half my paper round money in the process!

My mood was not helped when Hatherop went on to win his next race - at even longer odds. Shouldn't prophecies be more specific? Have a date stamp or something?

But this Footsie dream was different. I was sure of it.

Shelagh reminded me of the £1,000 we'd invested a week before the 1987 crash. And what about the pound? Three days after we left England on our first house-hunting expedition to France, the pound crashed out of the ERM and nose-dived towards parity with the Franc.

But I couldn't be shaken, after all, I was the person with the vision. So we diverted some of our savings into an index-linked unit trust ... and the stock market began to climb - exactly as my dream said it would.

A month later we bought shares for the first time. I dowsed the Financial Times and decided Southern Electric had a distinct aura surrounding its name. Three months later Southern Electric almost doubles in price and I have the golden touch.

After that, where else could I invest the money from the house sale but the stock market? Which is when I contacted Simon Gardiner at Eastleigh and Howard and asked him for suggestions. He came back with a proposal for a portfolio of unit trusts held in an off-shore insurance bond. I'd have the flexibility of selecting the unit trusts whenever I had a suitable dream and the whole would be held under the tax efficient umbrella of an insurance bond issued by Mutual Friendly in Dublin.

That is, until it was even more efficiently cancelled a few weeks later.

I'm not sure which is worse: never having a prophetic dream or having one and then finding your winnings are void - the bookie having legged it before the first bend.

(next instalment: in which an important letter is discovered)

Tags: crime, dreams, expat, france, gambling, horses, humor, humour, identity, memoir, nsa, nsa8, theft, true

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Kittens and Lambscapes.	Aug. 16th, 2006 @ 10:41 am

Yes, it's Kitten Picture Wednesday and first up we have Kai showing how a professional kitten model keeps his pose even when being attacked by a vampire kitten.

Next up we have Kai practising vampire kitten counter measures - aka boxing. Purists will note the perfection of Kai's guard - left paw tucked in to protect the chin, right paw preparing to jab. Yes, Kai's a southpaw.

Now, we have some outside shots as Xena discovers sheep. The sheep are amazed. For the curious, the ewe is called Scrappy- she's a 'mouton de la region' (i.e. unknown local breed) Her two lambs are Suffolk crosses. Our ram, not shown as he was probably flying F-14s over the Gulf at the time, is a pure Suffolk called Harmon Ramm - yes, we watched far too many JAG episodes.

Here's a lambscape showing First Contact - a nose sniff between Xena and the boldest of the lambs. Behind the lambs you can see one of our many granite boulders, two plum trees, and our sheep field sweeping up to the wooded Taille (centre and left). The Taille is a granite tor that was quarried for stone in medieval times.

First Contact was interrupted by Second Contact - the arrival of Saffron our 16.1 hands French Trotter who wanted to sniff noses with both Xena and the lambs. The latter pair took one look at the size of Saffron's nose and decided that that was a nostril too far and beat a hasty retreat. Here's a horsescape from a calmer time, showing Saffron and Rhiannon in the early morning haze. Our land is bounded by the curving lane to the right, the woods to the centre and the maize field to the left.

Tags: cats, farming, france, horses, kittens, lambs, pets, sheep

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Confessions of a Pioneer Computer Game Designer (Part Five: The Gas Fitter Derby)	Aug. 3rd, 2006 @ 11:52 am

So, in 1978 I left MI5 payrolls and the world of mag tape, card punches and 24 bit machines to join North East Gas and the wonderful new 32 bit world of discs, video terminals and databases. Luxury. But first I had to be inducted.

Unbeknown to me NEGAS were holding two induction days - one for computer staff and one for gas fitters. Being the proud owner of several scruffy genes - all of them dominant - I was naturally told to line up with the gas fitters. Which was very informative. We were taken to a large bay where they had a mock up of a typical living room which was used to practice installing gas appliances. An hour later - when they started handing out the blue overalls - I had an inkling that maybe I was not in the right place. But I did take something important with me - the importance of leaving the carpet clean after you've installed your program.

While at NEGAS I wrote a dissertation on computer gaming for my British Computer Society Part II exams and ... bought a microcomputer - an ITT 2020 with 48k of RAM. The ITT was the European version of the Apple with better graphics, displaying 360x192 pixels instead of 280x192. It cost about £1000 and came with no peripherals. For a monitor you used your TV and for data storage you used your cassette player. Loading a program could take several minutes.

So, I had my micro, now I was ready to become a computer games designer. I wrote to Heritage Models in the US asking if I could computerise their Space wargame Alpha Omega for them. They wrote back saying that they were thinking of getting into computer games and were compiling a list of programmers. I'd been added to their list. And would probably stay gathering dust on that list for several years. So, I decided to go it alone and design my own games.

My first game was a horse racing game called Derby. The game starts at the Newmarket yearling sales where the player(s) buy their untried horses and groom them over two years and up to 20 races over various distances and conditions before entering them in the Derby. Some horses are sprinters, some can't act on certain types of going, etc. None of this is known to the player - who has to find this out by observing their horses over trial gallops - staged between his or her own horses before each race - and on the race track against other horses.

All the races were shown graphically which was very difficult to program. No animation packages in those days. My wife drew a horse on graph paper (my attempt looked more like a camel - I blame the jockey) and then I had to convert her drawing to a pixel map and 'draw' the horse and rider typing in one pixel at a time, to create the 'shape.' I then animated the race using a kind of stop motion display by drawing the shape, deleting the shape and redrawing the shape a few pixels to the left. Very basic now but state-of-the-art back in 1979 when most games were text based.

(next instalment: Soccer Manager and, at last, that giant wargaming cat from the Arctic)

Tags: computer games, computers, derby, games, horses, humor, humour

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Animals Behaving Typically (i.e. Badly): Part Ten (The Chase, the Limpet and the French Highway Code	Jul. 25th, 2006 @ 11:20 am

(to recap: Shelagh and her psychotic, gelding-hating horse, Rhiannon, are going for a ride in the forest with Chantal, Veronique and four circling dogs - three of whom belong to Chantal. Oh, and Shelagh's just caused a stampede)

There are undoubtedly passages in the French Highway Code covering the etiquette of riders coming out of a forest track onto a main road. Probably something to do with stopping. But when you're an inexperienced rider on a runaway horse and you're being chased by a bogeyman - or bogeymen - and urged on by repeated shouts of "Monstre! Monstre!", you do not overdwell on the finer points of road etiquette.

Not that Veronique noticed the arrival of the road. With her eyes tight shut and arms locked in a bear hug around the gelding's neck, she was more concerned with not falling off. And when you've discarded the reins in favour of the limpet style of riding you do not have that many options when it comes to stopping.

Or much idea of where you're going.

Which is why she didn't notice the car.

Now, as in England, drivers in France tend to fall almost equally into three categories. Those who slow down and treat both horse and rider with caution. Those who regard horses as large cyclists (i.e. nuisances who don't pay road tax, have no rights and deserve to be run off the road at the first opportunity.) And people who are late, who, if not in actual possession of a note from God suspending all traffic legislation in their vicinity, are confident it’s only a matter of time before they do.

As the first sounds of the car horn penetrated Chantal's consciousness, she thought perhaps she'd identified a fourth category - the bogeyman. Who, not being a very fast bogeyman, had presumably taken to his bogeymobile in an attempt to catch up with the horses and was now laying in wait where the track met the road.

Of course, she was wrong. It was a fifth kind, the enraged dog-owner, who - convinced his pet had been kidnapped by a gang of mounted animal vivisectionists - had been combing the roads for the last fifteen minutes in an attempt to track them down.

"C'est mon chien!" he cried as, on cue, a hairy mop burst out of the undergrowth pursued by three even hairier ones.

"Give him back!" he continued, or words to that effect. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to accurately interpret an angry Frenchmen in full flow. Individual words cease to have meaning, instead they coalesce into a flow of emotion, waved on by energetic hand signals.

He was not amused.

Neither was Chantal.

When you've just fought for your life to escape the clutches of a bogeyman, the last thing you need is a mouthful of abuse from a motorist. And, being French, she was well equipped to give as good as she got.

Shelagh slipped past the conflagration, out onto the road ... and walked straight into another. Forty yards down the road stood a grazing gelding. It had had more than enough galloping for the day and was now in the process of replenishing its reserves from a roadside bank. A process made all the more difficult by the strange growth on its neck - Veronique - who, arms and legs locked, hung upside down with a tenacity that few limpets could even dream about.

Rhiannon pulled towards her quarry. Shelagh tried to make her stop. Veronique continued to defy gravity.

And in the foreground, Chantal and the motorist continued their wide-ranging debate on dogs, horses, bogeymen and animal experimentation. That is, until the enraged motorist, seeing his beloved pet's face at the passenger window, made the mistake of opening the door for his dog ... and was immediately engulfed by four excited canines.

A run in the woods and a ride in a car - could life get any better?

Few things in life are more difficult than persuading three large dogs, all adamant that a car ride had been promised, to vacate the back seat of a car.

Trying to deter a psychotic horse from biting its prey could be a candidate.

As could manoeuvring said prey whilst hanging upside down from its neck with your eyes closed.

It was a difficult day.

Chantal's dispute with the motorist switched tack.

"Give me back my dogs!"

"I don't want your dogs! Get them out my car!"

In the background, two horses danced excited circles as Rhiannon made repeated lunges towards the gelding. Rhiannon pulling for all she was worth to try and get her teeth into the gelding while Shelagh did her best to turn her away and Veronique wished she'd stayed in Toulouse.

The only happy faces beamed from the back seat of the car. What a day it had been! Could they come out again tomorrow?

Tags: culture, dogs, expat, france, horses, humor, nsa, nsa6, pets, travel

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Animals Behaving Typically (i.e. Badly): Part Nine (Witches, Bogeymen and the Rabbits from Mars)	Jul. 24th, 2006 @ 11:36 am

(to recap: Shelagh and her psychotic, gelding-hating horse, Rhiannon, are going for a ride in the forest with Chantal, Veronique and four circling dogs)

But dogs are easily bored and ten minutes later there were none to be seen. They'd disappeared through a gap in a fence and shot off in search of something new - probably a rumour that a giant rabbit had landed in a spaceship two miles away. Dogs are very gullible.

Which left Rhiannon free to concentrate on the gelding, a demonic eye scanning behind at every opportunity.

The road bent and curved its way between thickening woodland, predominantly oak with stands of chestnut and acacia; slender spires of juniper dotted the roadside, the whole knitted together with thorn and briar and huge hanging vines. Dark, abandoned and impenetrable. Except to the deer and wild boar and the occasional hardy chasseur and his dog.

It's still strange to see so much wild woodland. Even the National Forests in Britain are largely managed, their paths maintained, the undergrowth cut back, the trees thinned. It's a business. But here, so much is just left. An abundance of land and a declining rural population have turned vast tracts of woodland back to nature. With no one to maintain the tracks, the old chemins have quickly disappeared under advancing woodland. As have the old stone buildings, giving an eerie feel to the place - dark, dense and dotted with overgrown ruins.

Which turned the conversation, quite naturally, towards dark and dense topics. Witchcraft for one. According to Chantal it was endemic in the Pyrenees. And worse in the Ariege.

Veronique listened in mounting awe as Chantal detailed the pagan proclivity of the French départements. Haute-Pyrenees - witches, Les Landes - witches, Gers - witches. According to Chantal, any département with a tree in it was susceptible. It was the curse of the campagne.

Chantal had a very vivid imagination.

A grassy track loomed up on the left. A firebreak between the old abandoned woodland and a newer stand of conifers. If anything, the tract of conifers was even more forbidding. A densely planted sea of straight poles gradually merging into a vast blackness twenty or thirty yards in. But the firebreak was inviting, a line of light between two dark places.

The three riders followed the firebreak on its angular path around the plantation and off into a network of smaller rougher tracks. Thick woods stretched deep and dark on all sides and an eerie quiet descended. Gone were the distant hum of tractors and civilisation. And even the sky disappeared under the spreading canopy.

Rhiannon stopped dead, ears pricked and wild-eyed. Her usual reaction when confronted with anything remotely out of the ordinary - like a leaf out of place or a strangely shaped twig.

"What is zer matter?" asked Chantal, moving up alongside.

"She thinks she can see a monster in the bushes," joked Shelagh.

It was only a casual remark. But unfortunately Chantal knew enough English to know what a monster was and enough imagination to give it flesh.

"Monstre!" she cried.

"Qu'est-ce se passe?" asked a nervous Veronique from further back.

"Monstre!" repeated Chantal, now wide-eyed and certain of imminent attack from at least one bogeyman.

Veronique did not need telling twice. It may not have been the Ariege but it wasn't the centre of Paris either. There were trees everywhere, and how many did a bogeyman need?

She spurred her gelding on, who responded by shooting off in the only direction it knew - straight ahead - nervously pushing itself between Shelagh and Chantal and barging both horses aside.

Which gave Rhiannon the chance she'd been waiting for - a clear expanse of passing gelding flesh. She lunged, teeth bared, missed the gelding, grabbed Veronique and nipped her leg. Veronique screamed and galloped off through the trees convinced that at least half her leg was now residing in the jaws of said bogeyman.

Chantal wasn't far behind. She hadn't seen Rhiannon's lunge, she'd been too busy keeping control of her own horse when the gelding burst past. But she'd heard the scream. And that was more than enough.

Needless to say Rhiannon pushed all thoughts of strangely shaped twigs into the rear stable of her mind and set off in hot pursuit of the gelding.

It was a very dense wood.

With very narrow, twisty ill-maintained tracks.

And three desperate horses, two terrified riders, one deeply embarrassed rider...

And four dogs who, drawn by the screams and furious galloping, had decided to forgo the rabbits from Mars and rejoin the party.

Shelagh's screams of "Pas monstre!" didn't help either. Terrified ears quickly discarded the pas part and homed in on monstre. And if ever there's a greater spur for leaving a dark wood in a hurry than being pursued by repeated screams of "Monstre! Monstre!" I have yet to hear of it.

(next instalment: The Chase, the Limpet and the French Highway Code)

Tags: culture, dogs, expat, france, horses, humor, nsa, nsa6, pets, travel, witches

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Animals Behaving Typically (i.e. Badly): Part Eight (A Gelding Too Far)	Jul. 21st, 2006 @ 12:10 pm

(to recap: Shelagh and her psychotic Arab mare, Rhiannon, had been invited to ride with Chantal and Veronique - the fools!)

It was a long ride to Chantal's. Made even longer by the appearance of seventeen assorted tractors, lorries and flapping fertiliser bags. The latter waving so menacingly from their roadside nests that Rhiannon was forced to tiptoe past on the far side of the road. Nothing could be more frightening than a fertiliser bag where a fertiliser bag shouldn't be.

I've often wondered how Rhiannon would have fared in the Wild West. And where cowboys found horses that could be left loosely tied outside saloons? Every horse I've ever come into contact with would have disappeared before the first foaming pint came sliding down the saloon bar. And as for riding through gunfire - none of our horses would have made it past the first oddly shaped haystack let alone ridden into danger.

But eventually Shelagh and Rhiannon arrived and trotted into Chantal's yard. Whereupon both were immediately besieged by a welcoming pack of assorted dogs.

Rhiannon did not like dogs - they were on page five of her list - especially those that ran between her legs. She liked to maintain a dignified distance between herself and other animals. A personal space that extended to the ground even where she didn't.

A few sly sideways kicks quickly punched the air but the dogs didn't even notice. They were too excited at Shelagh's arrival. They knew a horse in the yard meant a walk was imminent. And a walk meant adventure.

The fact that the ride was to be accompanied by three large excitable dogs was not the only surprise. Veronique, Chantal's young friend, had a gelding.

Rhiannon did not like geldings either. They were on pages one, two, four and six of her list. And the pull-out supplement.

And it was more than a dislike, it bordered on the pathological. Put her next to a stallion and she became a paragon of good behaviour - quiet, obedient, calm, a fluttering eyelash or two. But put her next to a gelding and she'd lunge at them with teeth snapping. Or failing that, turn and try to flatten them with her back legs.

Shelagh tried to explain the situation to Chantal as best she could but not surprisingly the intelligence was not immediately believed. That is until Chantal noticed Rhiannon, teeth bared and ears back, pulling strongly in the direction of Veronique's mount.

If ever a horse looked bent upon a course of dire deeds, this was that horse.

After a brief peace conference it was decided that perhaps the best plan was to keep as much distance between the two horses as possible. And not to tell Veronique, who was nervous enough without the added pressure of a psychotic quadruped with a gelding fixation.

So Shelagh was tasked to ride in front, Veronique at the back and Chantal would keep the peace in the middle - and give directions. There was a forêt domaniale a mile or two down the road. She hadn't explored it fully yet but from what she'd seen there were some good riding tracks there.

Off they set, down the short drive and onto the road.

And along came Chantal's dogs, tracing energetic circles around the horses and occasionally through their legs.

Naturally, this did not meet with Rhiannon's approval who, in between kicking out at the dogs as they ran between her legs and craning her neck around to keep an eye on the gelding, was becoming somewhat difficult to handle.

Half a mile down the road, the three dogs became four - the fourth recruited from a passing garden.

Persuading cars to slow down for horses on the road had been a recurrent headache for Shelagh. But not today. The sight of three horses being circled by a pack of bouncing dogs proved too much for even the most insistent motorist. They stopped. One driver wound his window down. Whether for a chat or to remonstrate about his journey being interrupted was never known. For as soon as his head moved towards the open window it found a large dog already in residence. It's muddy paws resting on the lip of the glass and tongue slobbering over the driver's face.

(next instalment: witches, bogeymen and the rabbits from Mars)

Tags: culture, dogs, dolley, expat, france, horses, humor, humour, nsa, nsa6, pets, travel

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Horse Pictures!	Jul. 17th, 2006 @ 03:20 pm

There's nothing more dangerous than a man with a new camera. Except perhaps a man with a new camera and kittens. So, here's the promised horse pictures and a bonus kitten picture.

First up we have the blonde Arab - Jade - sadly no longer with us.

Next we have our new horse, Saffron, a 16.1 hands French Trotter.

And, finally, two kittens.

Tags: cats, horses, kittens, pets

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Animals Behaving Typically (i.e. Badly): Part Seven (Where Not To Ride Your Horse)	Jul. 11th, 2006 @ 04:16 pm

(to recap: we bought the house, we moved to France and our horse was menaced by a ten foot long caterpillar - nothing unusual there then)

Rhiannon was not having much luck on the horse-riding front either. When we first asked about horse-riding in France we were told there was no problem, you could go anywhere. France was a haven for the horse.

I thought it strange that I never actually saw anyone riding a horse in the three weeks I'd spent house hunting but everyone had been so adamant - horse riding; no problem, lots of it.

I began to suspect that perhaps, none of these people actually rode.

The biggest problem where we were was the lack of tracks. Or, more accurately, the lack of usable tracks. There were plenty of chemins, they just didn't go very far. Twenty yards in from the road and they fizzled out - usually into thick forest or a fence.

If Rhiannon had been better in traffic this might not have been a problem. But she had an aversion to large lorries, noise, tractors, cyclists, oddly shaped trees, flapping polythene...

She had a very long list.

Shelagh was ready to give up ... until we noticed a stable a few miles away and plucking up courage - and the ubiquitous dictionary - decided to investigate. Maybe someone there would know of a good place to ride.

And so we met Chantal. Very sun-tanned, very blonde and very talkative. Like many of the younger French we met, her English was much better than she let on. And much better than our French. She'd only just moved to the area herself and was in the process of establishing a livery.

She'd had trouble finding places to ride as well. Although she had found a brilliant sandy square in the village to use for exercise. Or so she'd thought. It was just like a purpose-built menage.

That is until she noticed the word Boulodrome writ large on a sign by the entrance. She was just thinking ‘Thank God, no one saw me’ when she became aware of the large number of eyes peering at her from various surrounding windows and gardens.

It's always the same. Do a good deed and the streets are deserted, plough up a Boulodrome for a half an hour and the entire boules committee are having a tea party next door.

She spent the rest of the afternoon with a rake. The French are very particular about their Boulodromes.

But she'd love to have Shelagh ride with her. She'd enjoy the company. Exercising horses was not much fun on your own. Would tomorrow be okay? She had a friend coming down from Toulouse in the afternoon. A young girl, who, though an inexperienced rider, was keen to learn and had a horse at the stables. Why didn't Shelagh join them?

Shelagh could think of two very good reasons - Rhiannon and her long list of things she didn't like to meet while out riding. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up. She'd meet them at two.

(next instalment: A Gelding Too Far)

Tags: culture, dogs, expat, france, horses, humor, nsa, nsa6, pets, travel

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I am even more beset my animals	Jul. 10th, 2006 @ 11:09 am

Ten days into life with two new kittens came ... a new horse - a 4 year-old French Trotter mare called Oree de Bassieres. If this trend continues - 12 legs added to the household within ten days - it'll be standing room only in the author's study by Christmas.

Life is fraught. The kittens, Kai and Xena, have taken to computers in a big way. The mouse is toast and the keyboard a tapping ground for two fingers and eight paws - often at the same time. Isxfgght zqswx - see what I mean.

Yesterday Kai reprogrammed Internet Explorer's font size - something I didn't even know was possible - making the text on all my webpages shrink to the near unreadable. I thought the Internet had implemented a space saving campaign. And that's not all, I spent the last week editing my mystery novel, An Unsafe Pair of Hands A week made even longer by having to edit out all of Kai's improvements. I'd be tapping away on my section, look up, notice the cursor had shot several pages back into the text and a large number of V's,W's, and X's had spread across the page - I suspect he was translating the book into Polish.

Thank God the horse can't type.

Aaargggh, splat!

I spoke too soon.

Tags: cats, horses, pets

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Animals Behaving Typically (i.e. Badly): Part Six (Colic, Wind and the Ten-Foot Long Caterpillar)	Jun. 28th, 2006 @ 12:03 pm

(to recap: we'd moved to France and ticks had moved onto Gypsy - our giant puppy - and given her pyroplasm. Now comes the episode that people said couldn't be true. But it is. Behold the ten-foot long caterpillar!)

Tick checks were intensified after that. We couldn't keep Gypsy out of the long grass entirely but at least we could check her coat when she came back. And our jeans - ticks, apparently, being quite partial to denim.

And we turned more and more towards the roads for our daily dog walks. At least tarmac was safe from ticks.

But not from dogs.

The average French farmhouse, we have found, is garrisoned by four dogs. The first of which is typically a terrier - or some other small and fiery breed - who's job it is to race outside at the first hint of an intruder and raise the alarm.

Usually they take one look at Gypsy, gauge her size, and then retreat behind the advancing second wave; who are either border collies or various hunting breeds - spaniels, setters and assorted flop-eared hounds. Their job is to hold the intruder at bay until the arrival of the ultimate deterrent - the gardien de vache - who always lumbers in last due to its enormous bulk.

And probably because it takes a while to put all its weight-training equipment away.

The gardien is always of indeterminate breed – normally a cross between a small cow and the Hound of the Baskervilles. And its job is to protect the herd - against anything from a pack of wild dogs to a couple of German panzer divisions.

We usually hasten our step at that point and look the other way. Hoping that an English couple and their dog are hardly worth bothering with.

It was coming back from one of these late morning walks one day when Shelagh noticed Rhiannon rolling in her paddock and pawing at the ground. She recognised the symptoms immediately. Colic!

It was Rhiannon’s turn to meet the vet.

He arrived within the hour, examined her for a few minutes and pronounced in almost perfect English, "it's zer wind."

"Yes, colic." we agreed.

"Non, wind," he insisted.

"Colic?" I repeated, trying a different pronunciation this time, making it rhyme somewhat tunefully with eek.

"Oui, Colique. Mais ... zer wind." And he emphasised his point by pursing his lips and blowing.

The wind? We were confused. What had the wind got to do with anything?

But we should have realised. Any country that has a wind that can turn people mad - strange but true: 'the mistral drove me mad' has been used successfully in a French court to escape imprisonment in a murder trial - can certainly find room for one that gives horses colic.

We listened, amazed. There was a wind, he told us, a very rare wind, but when it blew off the Mediterranean, it left horses writhing in its wake. He'd had several cases already that morning.

Shelagh cast a look in my direction. It was a look of blame. Not only had I been hiding all the articles on pyroplasm but I'd neglected to mention the wind they called Horsekiller.

And, of course, we couldn't have anything as simple as a mere colic-inducing wind sweeping over our fields. We had to have complications. Rhiannon had a strange rash on her shoulder. Was that anything to do with this wind? We'd never noticed a rash associated with colic before.

It's one of the disadvantages of our keyword method of translation that occasionally you hear something only too well - like the phrase 'ten-foot long caterpillar' - and whatever words you pad the rest of the sentence with, nothing can produce anything you'd like to hear.

I looked at Shelagh, had I misheard?

I hadn't. I could tell by the mouthed, "ten foot long caterpillar?" that she'd arrived at the same translation.

Then the vet pointed at a fir tree behind us.

"Là," he said.

When someone introduces a ten-foot long caterpillar into the conversation and then points at a tree above your head, you do not take that action lightly. Nor do you stand underneath said tree for long.

We leapt.

I could feel the imminent grip of the ten-foot long killer insect as it reached down from its lair in the trees. But I tried to disguise my panic by mutating the scream in my throat into a strangled cough.

Safely standing behind the vet, we looked back towards the tree.

It must have been an invisible ten-foot long caterpillar.

"Where is it?"

"Là ... zer nest."

I could see several balls of white filament dotted amongst the branches. Were they nests? Surely they were too small to accommodate the arboreal cousin of the Loch Ness monster?

"Processionnaire," he continued, struggling in a mixture of French and English. "Many chenille."

The dictionary was quickly consulted. Apparently it was not one ten-foot long caterpillar but a ten foot long line of processionary caterpillars joined head to tail, contact with which could cause skin irritations.

And of all the places to roll when struck with colic, Rhiannon had chosen the one piece of ground currently being traversed by a ten-foot long string of orange and black hairy beasties.

Luckily it wasn't serious. Except for the caterpillars - who suffer far more than skin irritation when brought into unexpected contact with half a ton of horse.

(next instalment: Where not to ride your horse)

Tags: culture, dogs, expat, france, horses, humor, nsa, nsa6, pets, travel

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