La Rentree and dreams of Wildfires!

Time for children to start a new school year, in France it's called La Rentree and the supermarket aisles have been filled, since the middle of August, with all the paraphanalia associated with school. The sight of all those pens and pencils and notebooks has fired my desire to start writing again. I have spent the summer lazing around, I am tanned from reading indulgently in the sun, but now my fingers are itching and ideas are floating around in my head.

I can sit outside in the early evening as the heat dissipates with the setting sun, it's quiet with just the occasional sound of a car or a dog barking disconsolately.

Although on Saturday it was a very different story. It started at about 3.30pm with the sound of a small plane circling overhead, nothing particularly unusual about that but soon it was joined by other planes flying over our house. It was then that I noticed the smoke over the hill behind our house. I called the OH to come and look. As the planes came low over the house we could identify them as Canadairs, the planes the French use to fight wild fires. It was obvious there was a fire in the hills behind our house, how close we didn't know but the smoke had dissappeared so we guessed it wasn't too close. But we spent an interesting time watching the planes coming low over the house. We found out later that about 40 hectares of garrigue[quite some distance from us] had been destroyed but no properties had been threatened. It is something that happens quite regularly in this part of southern France during the summer months, and unfortunately the fires are sometimes started deliberately. It didn't occur to me to take any photos until the 'excitement' was nearly over, I wouldn't make a very good journalist, and I missed the 4 planes all flying over together!!! So all I have is a rather grainy photo of what could be any plane. What is perhaps more interesting is that a week or so ago I had a dream/nightmare where there was a wildfire raging behind our house and we were trying to keep our house and our neighbours house hosed down with water. The house on the hill behind us was ablaze. As someone who very rarely remembers their dreams this was unusual to say the least. Premonition or what?

So tomorrow will see me back at my desk, pen in hand and notebook at the ready. I just hope I can remember some of the ideas I have had recently!!!

Oh and well done to Jackie for spotting the sheep hiding in the dining room. I am busy laying floor tiles at the moment so there may be more photos soon. Of course Jackie you could see the progress for yourself!!!!!!

And I really do intend to be a more diligent blogger this Autumn.