18-19th October: Fleeting weekend meetings

A 'fuller' weekend than normal here in Sleepy Hollow. It started inauspiciously. In the dim light of early Saturday morning, I stepped in something wet when retrieving the kettle. Closer inspection revealed a small lake of dog pee on the kitchen floor. Bill Sykes would have beaten his mongrel, but Alf's shame and embarrassment was punishment enough. It's hard enough at his time of life: he can't hear, he's purblind and his back legs are shot. Reassuring him that he wouldn't be sent outside without any breakfast, I set to with newspaper, mop and disposable glove. It took an entire back copy of The Connexion, the English-language newspaper for British expatriates in France. They say that we ageing men have bladders the size of a pea. Alf must have one the size of a water melon, though I can't quite see how it fits inside his now frail frame.

The trouble was, the night before we were so engrossed in Don Siegel's classic Invasion Of The Body Snatchers – still as fresh as the day your dentist fitted them – that we quite forgot to send our dog out last thing before bed for his 'pee-pee'. Clearly I hadn't been quick enough off the mark that morning. Unacceptable bed-lingering. It was another unwelcome sign that soon enough we must start thinking the unthinkable.  

Saturday morning in Martel I had a liaison at the weekly market. I knew nothing about the woman apart from her name; I like to live dangerously. I met Agnès some time ago at Sabine's bio stall, but Sabine gave up the market in favour of a delivery system and me, I like to choose the vegetables I buy. We bumped into each other again a couple of weeks ago at Giselle's stall and suggested that we meet for a cup of coffee together, because she had a little something for me. All very mysterious, but I was happy to go along with it, because she is a remarkably friendly woman with a patently open mind. Besides, I was at no great risk; she's always accompanied by her little 92-year old father, who wears funny rounded black boots that look like they once belonged to Noddy (or Oui Oui, as he's known in French).

So after filling my bag with enough vegetables for the week ahead, we went to the new tea house in Martel. It's just big enough to accommodate a couple of small parties comfortably. My market-pal revealed herself to be none other than Dr. Agnès Flour. She gave up her allopathic practice over a decade ago to carry out research into a very obscure line of homeopathy. Sponsored by her father and her husband, she has spent her time identifying national remedies based on the characteristics of a representative national figure. So far she has done this for six countries, including France, Germany, India and England, and is currently working on Spain. Her little something for me proved to be a short thesis on England and our emblematic personnage, Elizabeth 1^st. Hemlock appears to be the remedy in question.

It was fascinating, if slightly off-the-wall, stuff. I took my gift home and left it on the dining table. After a hard day at the coal face, my wife picked it up on her return, lay down on the sofa and devoured it at a single sitting. She had oft heard of Dr. Agnès Flour and had long wanted to read this particular thesis. Interestingly, the last homeopathic remedy prescribed for our daughter by our local doctor was... hemlock. Come to think of it, didn't it kill Socrates?

We had a late lunch on Sunday. Nothing particularly noteworthy in that, but half way through our roast potatoes and home-made vegetarian sausages with Tilley's elaborate onion sauce, a couple of friends turned up. Lured by the worryingly warm weather, they've popped over from the UK to winter their building site. It's always good to see them, but The Daughter was at first a trifle miffed, as it was her last Sunday lunch before her return to Paris and three, to her, is a magic number. She's a sentimental sausage. Like her parents I guess. But she got over it quickly.

It was a balmy afternoon and we sat outside on our back balcony after lunch, drinking roobois tea to a soundtrack of model airplanes looping the loop in the valley below and rifle shots echoing around the hills. Which reminded me that I still haven't mounted my Lewis gun on the hand rail. Although the whine of the model planes is irritating, the hunters will be my prime target.

On the balcony, our friends told us about an environmental action they'd recently participated in on behalf of our beleaguered planet. They described in vivid detail all the conflicting emotions they'd experienced: the excitement, the camaraderie, the fear and the adrenaline. It made me think of the local maquis here and all that they must have gone through when planning and carrying out their nocturnal operations against the Nazi occupiers. Such courage, such bravery. I made enough fuss this weekend about mowing the grass with a pulled inter-costal muscle.

Talking of military operations, I also joined the world of online auctions this weekend. I signed up for eBay and PayPal, because I'd spotted a Britain's Limited American Civil War gun carriage for sale. I try to banish regret from my life, as it's a redundant and harmful emotion. Nevertheless, I've always regretted losing my Union and Confederate gun carriages after my first marriage broke up. I got to keep the two cats, but I sacrificed my toys. I think it was one of the Geordie boys who lodged in our house. He must have taken a shine to them, boxed as they were with barely a scratch on the paintwork.

I spoke to my Amerikanische Freund, Steve, for his tips about eBay auctions. While following it to the letter, needless to say I missed a crucial detail. I hadn't realised that eBay notify you by e-mail when a higher bid has been placed. So I missed out on it by a quid. Will I live to regret such carelessness? Is my wife secretly rather glad that a model gun carriage won't be joining the Corgi Chipperfield's Circus set on display in our reading area? Am I a sadder specimen of humanity than I had previously credited?

With all this going on, I missed some of Iggy Pop's excellent and entertaining John Peel lecture on BBC Four. The sense of loss and regret also divided my attention from the second episode of the current season of Homeland on Channel 4. Consequently, I barely registered a single turn of an already complicated plot. My patience with the CIA's machinations is wearing thin.

At least we all remembered to encourage the dog to go out for his 'pee-pee'. Our returning 'good boy' was rewarded with a biscuit before bed. Look dad! No puddle this time...

Doppelgänger at Christmas

That was quite a week, that was. Well, I woke up this morning... Thursday morning, in fact, to find that I had been unveiled as the new manager of the English women's football team. Somehow, I managed to miss my interview on Radio 4's morning news programme.

It all could have been quite serendipitous. Only the other day, I was wondering whether my gainful work as an instructional designer had run its natural course. Was it time perhaps for a new career, even at my advanced age?

I confess that I was rather excited by the prospect of taking on a team of fit women and turning them into a crack unit of winners. (Unlike their male contemporaries.) With some interesting training techniques up my sleeve to try out, I was itching to get stuck in, so to speak. I even received from pals several offers of help with the physiotherapeutic side of the role. One, in particular, even went to the trouble of acquiring an online massage qualification in order to jump the queue. I had to temper his enthusiasm by questioning his practical experience with a magic sponge.

One thing's for sure, 'affable and friendly' I might be, but as the BBC sports page pointed out, I am 'not to be messed with'. Mark Sampson is definitely his own man. When it came to allocating the support roles, favouritism would not come into the equation. For example, I'm on good terms with a few plumbers in the area. They're good enough at their trade, but imagine if there was a problem with the showers at the end of a gruelling international. Could I count on them to remedy the problem on the spot, or would they engage in the usual shilly-shallying one associates (alas) with plumbers? No, I realised that the only person suitable for the job was... Guildford's favourite plumber, my brother.

In the cold light of the following day, however, I realised that a certain conflict of interest was colouring my credentials. I couldn't quite put my hand on my heart and say that I was going into this new venture in entirely the right, purely sporting, spirit. So, with rather less brouhaha, I thanked the powers for the offer and tendered my resignation. Reporters are even now clamouring at my door, hoping for some kind of indiscrete statement to fan the flames.

Never mind... It would have been an all-consuming role. Deep down, I knew that there wouldn't be time for my book-making career in tandem. Only this week, after an agonising Sunday wrestling with formatting, I uploaded my book of our grand design to Amazon's Kindle platform. After almost ten years in gestation, and thwarted up until now by the commercial considerations of traditional publishing houses, it was a liberating experience to get it all down on paper. Well, a computer screen; I never cared for carbon paper. Bloody Murder On The Dog's Meadow is less about construction and more about the de-construction of family life during our year of living dangerously close to the edge. I don't know if one can put a download in a Christmas stocking, but I'm hoping that it's priced so modestly that it might serve as a last-minute universal 'tree present', as my grandma used to label her more minor gifts.

So... if readers would care to go there and fork out three bucks or so for what Stephen Fry has already called 'an entertaining read', and then, if they like it sufficiently well, post a glowing review on said Amazonian platform, who knows? In my wildest dreams, it will become a succès d'estime and supplement my retirement. I've already received a royalty payment of £1.82. Dream hard enough and the sky is surely the limit.

Flushed with a sense of achievement, I took time off from the daily grind to go Christmas shopping with the Good Wife of Brive la Gaillarde. Around the church in the centre of the old town, they've put up some of those market stalls that look like self-assemble sheds from Monsieur Bricolage. One of them was womanned by a woman in a smart coat from the Dordogne selling double jazz CDs illustrated by some celebrated French cartoonist. They were overpriced, but I was tempted by a Ben Webster compilation for a friend who likes Duke Ellington's finest tenorman.

We got talking and she congratulated me for and then corrected my French. She talked about all les anglais in the Dordogne (living in the department and not floundering in the river) and I recognised the patter of a crypto-racist. The ones who hide behind a painted smile. It all came out: don't speak the language, stick to themselves, bring supplies in from the UK, blah blah blah. She had English neighbours, she told me with a certain faux-liberal pride, and I sensed that she'd be the sort to sell them down river as soon as Marie Le Pen's xenophobic foot soldiers start sniffing easy prey. It was with great pleasure that I was able to point out that London is now the sixth biggest French city and then witness the genuine surprise that masked the painted smile. Had I had my wits about me, I would have asked her whether she had ever tried to live in a foreign land, far from all that's safe and familiar, and then suggested that – in the words of the song – she tried to walk a mile in my shoes before rushing to judgement.

Readers, I bought not a one of her CD coffrets.

My week ends with the return of our prodigal daughter. She rides in on Saturday afternoon on the 10.10 from Paris, or whatever time it leaves the Gare d'Austerlitz. Two whole weeks of Christmas en famille. What fun, what bliss. Myrtle can go back to sleeping on The Kid's bed. Once the commercial mayhem has abated, we can settle down to chestnuts roasting on an open fire and some of the films I have been assiduously burning onto DVD.

I hope you've noticed how I've used words like 'platform' and 'burning' in their modern sense. I am the very model of a modern major-domo – but not so modern that I cannot raise a cup of sack and wish ye all a very merry Christmas and a most happy and prosperous new year.

Hosanna in excelsis!