Seasonal Changes

Yesterday, my sweet H studied my first ever blog entry.
“It doesn’t really sound like you,” was his eventual opinion.
Now, bear in mind that this is the man who suggested that the word “bitch” should form part of the blog title. I took this as an oblique compliment, and decided that I had succeeded in setting a high tone for my posts.

I set off for my walk with Porridge and started to muse about the seasons, life, death, and change generally, as I waded through a knee deep river of copper leaves. My thoughts settled on darling Daughter who decided to dye her hair green in time for her return to lycée after the holidays, “for a change”. This was an act of supreme bravery, or foolhardiness, I thought, for a teenager living in a backwater. I went with her to choose the dye in a specialist (yes, even in Brittany) professional hair product shop. Behind the cash desk sat an overweight teenager with long very black hair, coloured with vivid red stripes. Loitering among the shelves were about six other customers, all with black hair of various lengths, and with red stripes. We studied the available colours, and she fixed on emerald green to streak onto her blonde hair. My admiration went up another notch. Not only did she want to look different, but she wanted to look different from all the other people who wanted to look different.

It was at this point that a squelch underfoot brought me back to the present, and I remembered another aspect of the change of season. It is impossible to live in Brittany without becoming an expert in the study of manure in its many glorious guises. The large maize field had just been harvested and ploughed, so I should have known what was coming. I think the worst has to be lisier, which is the liquid version that tends to get sprayed on nearby fields whenever I have a sheet drying on the line. However, this was a much less vicious mixture of chocolate-brown cow pat and straw, which had slopped onto the pathway in enormous quantities. Porridge was off like a bullet from a gun and was simultaneously rolling in it and slurping it down while I was still on the starting blocks.






Note the way that Porridge has placed it behind her ears, like perfume.





Sometimes a girl needs a change of hair colour…and green is much better than chocolate-brown.