Nearly summertime

 As it gets warmer and lighter (clocks forward in a week) the dogs get vocal in the lighter mornings, so we'll be glad of a little relief as the change momentarily fools them!  This blog is far less frequent than it used to be, and until now my excuse was that I have been completing the FOAL (Friends of the Anglophone Library, in Montpellier) catalogue which had had an unfortunate lapse over a couple of years.  Now happily updated, and my librarianly muscles have been flexed to good effect.

Still remembering Michel on this final busy weekend of rugby in the 6 nations, we recall the first France-England match after our move here, when a mutual friend put a Union Jack in his garden and a tricolor in ours.  We shall watch the latest 'crunch' tonight thinking of him.  My photo collage skills were tested then.

Our life here revolves a lot around our now twice-weekly language sessions, the latest on Friday.  We have a Tuesday get-together with shared lunch in various people's houses or (as next week) in the Centre Quaker in Congénies.  This is the only purpose-built meeting house in France, and is home to a very small but committed group of Friends (of which I am no longer a part).  It was important for us in our early years here, and is still a welcome and welcoming venue for our French conversation groups.

It is also symbolic of the ghosts we find increasingly in our French life and landscape - among them for example Brian Painter and Dennis Tomlin, both sadly no alive but whom we think of as we visit or pass the places where we met.  Marcel Bombart was among important influences as the instigator of our conversation group, but others no longer in France but thankfully still alive are David and Wendy, Andy and Irene, Nigel and Elizabeth, Hélène and her dad Pierrot, and on and on.  The importance in the end of all these friends is the memories we hold of them, enriching our lives.

With apologies to supporters of other teams, I can't help sharing my excitement that Liverpool is edging toward the top of the Premiership.  Mary is a bit less fortunate in her choice of Arsenal to support, but I think she'd say it is not the same since Arsène Wenger retired!

Celebrating the long-overdue release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe I am also reflecting on other lighter and pleasanter things recently, among them the broadcasts from Crufts, highlights (fronted by the impeccable Clare Balding) of which we watch every year - this year's winner, a beautiful chocolate-coloured flat-coated retriever, pleased me very much.

In the wider world, the horror of war in Ukraine rubs in the mindless cruelty of the current Russian leadership reflecting the bleak Stalinist period of the 30s and 40s, but I do choose to read history like Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands because it is too easy to pull wool over one's own eyes, let alone letting others fake news.  I recently finished Anthony Beevor's The battle for Spain which drew me through several threads of interest - a nearby country we can easily visit, the history of cycling and the Vuelta race we often follow, and so on.  But Stalin and Hitler crop up again, both practising their war techniques (Guernica as famously depicted by Picasso and so on), and the implacable iron fist of Stalinism which was perhaps the final straw in the failure and fragmentation of the anti-Franco forces which enabled the generalissimo to triumph.  All this leaves room for lighter or at least funnier diversions (reading and on tv) including Adam Kay's This is going to hurt.

Meanwhile we have an election in which we cannot vote next month, lots of beautiful sunshine (punctuated last month by nearly 100 mm of rain after over 2 dry months, plants saying thank you) so I leave you with three photos, one of grateful plants and another reflecting the current zeitgeist.