Pass the snorkel ...

There are times when daily life at Grillou appears to verge on surreality (or is it insanity?). Today was one of them.

If you live in the south of France, you won't need me to tell you about the last month's weather. If you don't, let me just say one word: rain. No, there's been so much of it I've simply got to say it again: rain. I've been in India in the monsoon season, I've had holidays in Brittany, I've even lived in west Wales for heaven's sake, but the last month really takes the Petit Beurre. Grillou is on a hill, but our ground is like a sponge; the tomatoes and aubergines look at me accusingly every time I swim down to the 'hot' (ha!) potager; I've lost count of how many times I've run round like a mad thing unplugging the laptops and router and the electricity's gone off because of thunderstorms; and a couple of days ago we had the sad job of cutting off literally hundreds of buds from our beautiful rose bushes that had simply rotted in the rain.

But bizarrely, in the middle of all this, the cherries decided to ripen. A couple of days ago they were hard and white; this afternoon they were red, ripe and starting to go mouldy on the tree as we watched. Now I love cherries, and have always wanted a productive cherry tree. (I'll let you into a secret. When we first moved in, we thought the cherry trees were peach trees. So we were more than a little surprised when spring came, and little cherries started to appear!). There was only one thing for it - to get out there in amongst the stairrods and the thunder and the lightning, and pick 'em.

Now you'd think, wouldn't you, that if you'd had a brain haemorrhage less than a month ago the last thing you'd want to do at this moment would be to get up a ladder to pick cherries with the rain and the thunder and the lightning railing around you. Especially if you've got one lens of your glasses covered in black plastic because you're still suffering from post-traumatic vision syndrome and are seeing in double vision. But clearly I'm just a wimp, because ...



So far we've - okay, so I didn't really have a lot to do with it, but I was sanding shutters numbers 16 and 17 at the time if that's any excuse - picked about 10 kilos, and I'd guess there are another 5 or 6 still to pick, that's if the jays and the blackbirds don't get there first. That's one helluva clafoutis ...