rain, fantastic, that what I say

It is so good when something happens, that sets you off laughing and on Sunday evening I was busy watching over my pressure cooker bottling pasata and ironing at the same time when Mike popped his head around the door with that look on his face that said...you're never going to believe this one. I switched off the process of bottling, can't leave that to explode all over the kitchen then followed Mike out to the willow and looked up to see our little white visiting hen about 20 foot up in the tree. I never knew that hens could fly that high and we watched in absolute amazement. I laughed to the point of tears at the ridiculous squarking noise she was making thrashing about at that height but after about 5 minutes it occurred to me that perhaps she was reluctant or too embarrassed to attempt a control crash with us watching so I turned my back to walk in and she literally fell off the branch and fluttered to earth, ruffled her feathers and toddled off to wherever she visits us from.

We have just spent a couple of days in the van, we went over to Neufville en plain to visit new friends Graham and Anne, who are just finishing off a new build and were really keen to show us the garden and progress since April, which I must say was pretty good. They do however, like our friends Anna and William, have new canvas for the garden design and I for one would just love to get my hands dirty and do a bit of design work with them. Anne and Graham are coming here on Monday to see our progress in three years, oh yes on the 16th of August we will have been here in Brevands for three years, it hardly seems possible.

So after morning coffee in Neufville we set a course over to the west side of our peninsular and headed for the beaches. We found a free camper site in Siourville where we pitched up for the night. HOSS was banned from the beach until 19:00 so we sat and read and I started up a discussion with a man in the camper next door who had trained German Shepherds for the military and had a heap of things to tell me. HOSS is a bit of a free spirit and some people see it as a lack of training, I just see it as personality, he always comes when he has been called it just takes him a little time to realise that it's him we are calling, I realised that needed to take this chappy with a little pinch of salt when he explained that you should only feed a dog like HOSS once a day, but I know that to avoid the danger of a twisted gut you should feed them two or maybe three times a day, I said nothing but then he continued to tell me stories and adventures about the dogs he had trained and how he lost a beautiful GS with a twisted gut...I frankly didn't have the energy or depth of French to tell him he was a total looser and cut the discussion short, had a gin and tonic, eat my dinner then took my well cared for and well trained HOSS for the run of his life on the beach. Mike beat me at scrabble...again...and as soon as it was dark enough we climbed up into our little bedroom pod closed the curtains, said night night to HOSS and fell asleep only to be woken by hours of torrential rain which you might think would have ruined our holiday, but no....we were smiling all the way back to Brevands splashing in the puddles and putting the window wipers on full speed..rain, fantastic, that what I say