The central heating rumbles away. It’s most unreasonable for this time of year and I am thankful that I started off the winter with a full tank. The locals say that plant growth is a couple of weeks behind where it normally is but this garden doesn’t seem to have noticed. My first job was hacking back two weeks of grass growth and I’ve begun to tackle the weeds but it’s dispiriting when the temp is 11 degs. What is odd is the valerian that dominates the single bed – and would dominate the garden if allowed – is normally busy with bees, butterflies and hummingbird hawk moths. But none are around. Even the cicadas have shut up to wait for warmer weather. I’m about to go out to show compassion and fill the bird feeders. After seeing what could be achieved in South Africa I’m going to make an attempt to upgrade the variety of goodies on offer.
A dear old friend, an expert on such matters, once told me that gossip served the same purpose as grooming in monkeys. It strengthened social bonds within the group and that the most successful monkeys initiated grooming, as the most successful humans were those that brought fresh gossip to the party. But I was told yesterday that the tom-toms said that I had sold this house. And that a friend recently returned to the UK was now dead. And that I’d had an affair with a friend a few miles from here. All are complete bullshit. Does this mean that the social groups round here are dysfunctional? Gossip is useless if it’s nothing but fantasy.
South Africa, at least the parts I saw, is a stunningly beautiful country with a climate to match. We went down to Durban and stayed with kin. As with so many houses, the most important room was the veranda that sat high on a hill overlooking the curve of the seafront where we ate dinner. It’s so remarkable that incoming planes used to – and probably still do – turn off their lights so that passengers could look down on it. It now has a great arch over a stadium that was built for the world cup that further enhances the necklace of lights strung along the sea. We were given a guided tour of downtown on the way to a beach for breakfast where the young surfed and I dowsed myself in the Indian Ocean. Just a street or two back from the glitz and the skyscrapers are desperately sinister darkened tenements with iron grilles instead of doors, police cars every few yards and drug deals being done beneath their noses.
The monkey came raiding the house we were staying in yesterday. It bounded down the side of the house and made a swerve when it saw us sitting on the veranda and had to content itself by snatching grapes and an apple from the bird table. It retired to the roof to eat them and then swung itself over the guttering to examine us and see if it was worth chancing another run. The householder normally shouts and yells at it but he was absent and I found it hard to show the aggressive outrage that is the normal deterrent. I heard of someone who left a bathroom window open and a dozen of the animals weekended inside. The house was trashed with damage as bad as that created by a teenagers party that had been advertised on Twitter. At least they would use the lavatories. Monkeys don’t.
The airport in Johannesburg has a smoking lounge that is wonderfully absurd. It’s very dark with brown walls and carpets, addicts sitting on the floor or in booths in complete silence contemplating blank walls with an ashtray in front of them. It felt like a 19th century Shanghai opium den. I patronised it twice during a four-hour stop over and found it rather giggly.
Wildlife is a bit more in your face here than in France. A monkey cleaned up the bird table yesterday and one has to be careful that it doesn’t come inside to raid the fridge. Zebras cud peacefully beside the road leading to this house. The house is a charming curiosity at the top of an estate of new fat cat Lego houses surrounding a golf course. A rather sour-faced bloke below us stomped round with a bucket and a paintbrush flicking what must have been some sort of animal repellent over the plants in his immaculate new garden. Once he was indoors a couple of duikers arrived and delicately nibbled at his roses.
I’ve been coming to this country since 1967. It remains astonishingly different from the rest of the continent with an infrastructure far superior to anywhere else. Crime, corruption, unemployment and grinding poverty have always been problems but now there’s a prosperous African middle class. The greatest change seems to be that racism has all but disappeared. It’s very surprising.
A stushie in the local (South African) press today. A couple of traffic policewomen were caught on CCTV augmenting their income by selling sexual favours from their police car to passing punters.
And Justin Beiber came to Johannesburg over the weekend. The baddies, of which there seem to be an inordinate number in this country, broke into the safe where the boodle was being kept and escaped with millions from his concert but I suspect he could afford it. The pic is of Himself with my 15 year-old great niece. She blagged her way into his presence and outcooled all the squealie boppers of the nation by having her pic taken with him. Apparently he was much more charismatic than he appears from the snap.
We spent last night in a game park and drove round the appalling dirt roads in an ancient estate car oohing and aahing at the beasties. The drawback was that the car had a faulty starter motor, so I had to exit the car to push start it. WARNING! Under no circumstances leave your vehicle as the animals are dangerous! Knowing that a couple of tons of rhinoceros was certainly lurking behind a bush made sure that I did not hang about.
The weather remains practically perfect – what France should be but, I gather, isn’t at the moment.
Here, 9,000 miles from France, the terrace is called the veranda. The birds that come to the feeders are weavers, barbets, mannikins, Cape robins, as opposed to tits, great and blue. They’re also rather tamer here and are quite happy to sit tight until you’re a couple of feet from them. The view is not dissimilar although there are probably half a million people within long telescope range, rather than 500.
We arrived to rain and 17 degrees, similar to France, but it’s now blue and 23. Here winter is approaching, the trees are changing colour and the maize is desiccated waiting to be harvested. They worryingly drive on the left which no longer feels natural and one feels a bit of a prat when you automatically say ‘bonjour’ and ‘merci’ in the shops. Zig-zagging down the runway at Heathrow amid white-knuckled passengers on the way to pick up a connection was different from last time I made that flight. But the pilot, just like last time, apologised for keeping us on the plane because, inexplicably, there were no steps to disembark us or bus to take us to the terminal, which meant we made to next flight just as the gates to it were closing after a sprint through Terminal 5. Does flying have to be such a profoundly distasteful experience?
The end of the month is the deadline for filing tax returns. Consequently the tax offices are besieged by punters trying to obtain help in filling in the forms. In order to cope, the opening hours of our local office have changed. They have decided to take an extra half hour for lunch and now close at 11.30 am. This is very French.
I have been busy cutting grass, trying to avoid showers, in order to avoid coming back to a meadow after a trip to foreign parts. It’s 23, still, humid and I badly need a shower. The trip involves an 11-hour flight in cattle class, which is a little depressing. My neighbour will take the house keys and come to inspect the premises at regular intervals. He may well set up shop on the terrace since the view from it is better than his. I have not yet decided whether or not to ask him to water the garden. He and family have gone to the fair in the town up the road. I did it once – streets crammed, po-faced line dancers, rip-off stalls and guys on stilts – so I don’t have to do it again. I had the small dog tucked under an arm and the guys of stilts freaked him out, particularly when they swooped down from a great height to say coochie-coo.
I was faintly horrified that I found myself rooting for the Tories in the local council elections. I’ve voted for almost everybody else during my electoral life. None of my selections have yet gone to jail, but it’s been a pretty close run thing. Bar an aberrant moment when I voted for Tony Blair, I have nothing of which I am ashamed. I even voted for the far right once when some bloke wanted to do some almighty stir in the Scots parliament. I thought this was a good thing, but quite what he wanted to do I have long forgotten. But to think, in my dotage, I may be a closet Tory is definitely shaming.
It’s now broken into proper summer here, and about time too. We had people here for lunch this afternoon and most of the time was spent on the terrace, which reminded me of why I came to this country in the first place. The countryside is lushly green and the birds are still noisy with spring.
When I can’t be bothered to take the dog on a sensible walk, we perambulate round the village. During the school holidays I have been joined by the son of one of the neighbours who swoops round me on his bike. It shows how unexciting this place can be if I am an attraction. I’m not great shakes in conversation with reticent 10 year-olds in English, let alone in French and we either progress in silence or I make laboured small talk about very little indeed and receive monosyllables in reply. He does have the grace to pretend to understand my French. Today we discovered a small, squashed serpent on the road. He thought it a viper, me a grass snake. His identification was the more dramatic so I did not press my case.
I am in the process of trying to go French with my tax. I think it’ll be bone simple and I should be able to do it myself next year, but I have engaged a professional to launch me into the system. Coincidentally I was approached by a moneyman from one of the largest of such companies in France, specialising in expat affairs. Thinking I might as well milk him for free, I asked him a couple of questions that had arisen. The information he gave was directly contradictory to that of the Paris accountant. I am still unafraid of French bureaucrats so I will do what will cost me least.
I had an email congratulating me on the third anniversary of my arrival in France. It seems like a moment when I should share such insights that I have gained from uprooting myself and going to a strange land to live amongst foreigners. I haven’t really got any – bar that baguettes are overrated, one should never annoy a frelon or a gendarme and make damn sure there’s a decent central heating in any house you buy out here.
Granny is being tucked into a little, currently superfluous house in the middle of the village. There she can live on her own and has a dozen of her descendants within 50 yards of her front door to scoop her up when she tumbles down the stairs.
My neighbour returned from the half-term holiday in Brittany bearing a bottle of Medoc, lableless, made by one of his mates. His family is in the midst of trying to work out what to do with Granny. She’s over 90 and has her own small house in a nearby town – without any hot water – but needs a full time carer if she’s to stay there, which is what she wants. That’s not practical and the family will have to pay for whatever is decided. The state doesn’t pick up the tab. Granny is a long-term enemy of the sorciere. The latter has got it into her head that Granny died last year. I tried to tell her Granny was still in life, but this depressed the old bat so much that I haven’t disillusioned her since.
I counted five trilling nightingales last night. A couple close by and the others fading into the distance. At night the whole of southern France must be covered by the racket. They are obviously singing their claims to a certain patch of territory and it’s quite sensible of them to keep going when others are quiet as they aren’t drowned out by everything else. But when do they sleep? Wisteria has been running rampant at the chateau for a dozen years. It is over the roof this year and has spread itself across the ground to create a carpet of blossom.