Returned from my travels.

Returned from my travels.

Here I sit, returned from France and more or less caught up with myself. It was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to spend time in ‘very’ rural France with only the sound of birds, cows, sheep, the donkey who lives down the lane, frogs and the occasional tractor to break the silence.
It was equally good to spend a bit of quality time with my sister, not to mention experience her delicious country cooking.
The weather was pretty awful at times, we had some sunny days and, on the whole it was warmer and dryer than it was at home, but it wasn’t the hot sunny break I’ve experienced in the past. I walked along the country lanes some mornings before breakfast; the cold misty mornings showed me a whole new side to the area. It was quite beautiful, but in a totally different way. I just love her garden, it’s quite wild, and much bigger than most gardens, more like a small field really with magnificent views across the country side. She has cherry and apple trees, many different fruit cains, a walnut tree, a fig tree and a selection of vegetables, salad food and herbs in varying stages of growth. The Forsythia was in full bloom, along with the hawthorn flower and the blossom from the peach trees, but every thing has been delayed by about 3 weeks due to the exceptionally harsh winter and the recent bout of bad weather. This time last year every where you looked you would see Wisteria, and Lilac in full bloom, this year the buds started to show just as I was leaving.
We explored the little towns nearby where I admired the ancient medieval architecture; France seems to retain so much more of its historic built environment than we do. We preserve grand houses, but France seems to have more of the humble traditional buildings left intact.
On one of our excursions we visited a local trade/ craft exhibition where I spied this tiny rose quartz Buddha. He was pretty expensive for what he is, 22 Euros, but I bought him anyway because I fell in love with him.

We had some sunshine, I even managed to get a bit of a tan, but some days were spent on the sofa beside the log fire with a good book. These days I only seem to get the chance to read while on holiday, it was a real treat to have uninterrupted peace, no phone, no doorbell, no anything, just glorious isolation and peace. I picked up a book at the airport that I’m still ploughing my way through, it’s a fascinating, enlightening, thought provoking  book that should be compulsory reading for any student of international politics/ economics. Yep it’s more of a a ‘serious’ read than your typical holiday reading, in fact I’ve not picked up a book like this since I left Uni. The book in question is ‘When China Rules the World’; by Martin Jacques, published penguin, ISBN 978-0-140-27604-6. Most reviews seem intent on dismissing his ideas, personally I found the whole argument interesting and in places pretty convincing. At times its a bit repetitive but its easy to understand, you don't need to sit with the dictionary to read it and its full of ideas I've never thought about before. If any one is up for a political read please give this one a go and let me know what you make of it. I would be interested.

On the nicer days I did some drawing and painting, but not as much as I planned. I painted the tiny building opposite their house that they presently used as a garage.
This one little painting that should have taken a couple of hours ended up taking three or four days. I would go out, set up my painting stuff, and just as I was getting into the swing of things, down would come the rain and off indoors I would go until the following day when the whole process would start all over again. I eventually finished it by taking a photo of the building and painting from that on the kitchen table.

So … briefly….. that was my holiday, the rest of the weekend will be spend doing all the normal ‘just back from holiday’ things, catching up with laundry, check the garden, contact the kids etc etc. Hopefully I’ll also spend a little time catching up here, and then on Monday it’s back to work I go.