Ideal Eco Home: A Liturgy

We arrive and climb a mountain staircase ("It's a bit of a climb but it's worth it for the view"  says Charlotte the owner, creator, builder and sculptor of this wonderful, wonderful house) and up onto the wooden landing, half inside, and out there is mountain after mountain and forest upon forest, and B, who has been moaning that he wants to go home for the latter part of the journey, announces with almost extravert enthusiasm:  I  LOVE  IT  HERE, a phrase much repeated throughout the week.

Earth has not anything to show more fair, surely Wordsworth would agree upon this view...morning light on the eastern veranda and sunset on the western terrace, an extacy of beauty, almost too much to bear...

 Every window a picture, the smell of the sweet oaks, the rustle of the sun...

The house, sculpted and moulded into the mountainside, its supporting pillars flourishing like trees and trees flourishing against the supporting pillars...

Outer wall, west terrace

A threshold...

...ceilings vaulted like the sky, where song, recorder and guitar bound.  Textured and nuanced and rounded, soft places to read and sleep, points of detail, doorways and ladders and surprises...a temple to the art of living.

R rises...and wakes

A single dahlia at each table

Garden carved from mountain, nature awake at the window and tapping at the door...oh the beauty, the beauty of this place...

7 branched candelabra

Bark close up

Oak leaning towards the house and away from his Silver Birch neighbour

Field of fallen plums

Sun jewels

But alas, you cannot go there, and I cannot go there again,  for Charlotte has met her monk and is leaving all this for a cloister in town with him, and the house is taken, rented out, paradise found and lost...many tears shed, joy, fulfilment, and longing.
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Crapahut in the Forest

The Entrace to the Forest Adventure

What?  Yes, they really did call their forest adventure park by the delightful name of Crapahut.  Actually there was a genuine crapahut but I'm sure they didn't name their adventure park after it.  http://www.crapahut-aventure.fr/

A really cool way to ride a bike...

Lovely knees swing through the trees...

A river runs through it, perfectly clear...

Leg mountain, as JC sleeps on a bench...

Bike a really long way up...

R did his first forest adventure park a week before.  He went on the over 16s section without the supervision of a parent (the parent didn't know anything about it) and spend so much time dangling by one arm, falling vigorously and scrambling to safety that the next day he couldn't move a muscle and complained fairly bitterly about it for four days afterwards and was unable to lift luggage, do houswork or indeed, to move from the prone position with a cartoon book in front of his nose.  However, by the next week he was game to give it another go...

Storm on the last night

On the last night a storm rose up, stretched, took a stroll over the mountain range and made sure everything had a good watering.   From the delicious vantage point of our open wooden veranda we were exposed to it all, yet protected.

The rain drummed and electric excitement mounted and lightening staggered from one end of the sky to the other.  It grew darker and darker.

The ground finally expired its week long heat in the form of a mist, a storm being rose up, some say it was a giant, others say it was a dragon.

All night long the storm strolled over the mountains, flashing its torch.  B and I snuggled under the blankets on the open veranda, and B fell asleep in the aftermath of the storm.

Blog Stats

Google has introduced a new statistics service so I can see how many page views I've had and what country they come from.  So if I recommend it to someone in England I can immediately obsess over whether or not they actually looked at it, by seeing if there is a new page view from England or not.  (Not).

The World Wide Web is Wonderful!.   Clearly this blog is only ever viewed by my mum and my friend Jenny, and yet, I have had over 1000 page views, from places like the USA, Russia, Brazil, Japan, The Netherlands...the thing is, only a really tiny percentage of the world surfing population has to open your blog by mistake and close it again as quickly as possible, and you have become famous and can sell advertising!

Out out damn streak!

Another mum has had a bit of a makeover.  I admire the fuzzy lovely dark honey glow of her hair.  I want some.  She recommends a salon in the expensive end of the Paris banlieu:  100 smackers and one and a half hours minimum in a chemically inhanced environment with a hair genius from Vietnam...darling that is so not me.


Someone I know who used to be a hairdresser said she could do it in her front room for less than half the price and it wouldn't take long.  The trusting side of my personality, what's left of it poor thing, managed to gain control of my decision making, something which I cannot explain.  After some wonderful conversation and a few quick swipes of blue stuff on a brush, the deed was done.   When I got home and thought to look in the mirror, there was no dark honey enhancement for me oh no:  BADGER STRIPES

I teased out the hair, turned from side to side, changed the lighting, but the truth has to be faced:  I look like a wire haired Jack Russell terrier with mange, an old person and Lily Munster.  


Obviously the streaks have to go, but how?  I searched our local shop for ammonia free natural tints to dye the things brown again, but as I was slathering the stuff on, I noticed that it was not free from hydrogen peroxide.  The streaks dimmed to a peachy colour, my hair condition further deteriorated - I can now add Ken Dodd to the list of people I look like.

Finally I hit upon the idea of felt tips, at first a green permanent marker which my failing middle aged eyesight identified incorrectly as black, but even the black one failed to make its mark on the white stripes.

My current hair colour is Edding 4600 T-shirt pen number 7.

"Oh no, you have to iron it to fix the colour" I said to B, trying to visualise my fringe on the ironing board.

"You could do it with your steam curling tongues" said B.

The boy is a genius.

So Proud

Tuning up...

The solo

Trio with our friend J who's taken up the flute again 

Playing with teacher K and school colleague B

Saturday 23rd June 2012:  he didn't want to do it.  Exams were coming up.  He hates it.  He did it.  It was wonderful!

Toujours Geezer

This morning I was meditating to some Jordi Savall musique and mourning the injustices of the world with tears streaming down my face when a tell tale synchronised scrunch of many boots on the gravel warned me of the approach of geezers just when you least expect it like the Spanish Inquisition.   Swiping at the running mascara and fixing a smile on my face I rose to say hallo.

I really think they might finish today as, although clouds loom as ever, it is not actually raining, and they have incentive:  tonight is the Portugal -Spain match (this is causing some tension as Spain is a strong side.  I hope they finish the painting before Disappointment sets in).