Sad start to Easter week

 Yesterday our dog Elvire ended her life.  She was 13+ years old and had heart problems, but in the past few weeks her condition deteriorated rapidly with oedema which made her breathing ever harder, and in the past few days she'd stopped eating.  We have a really nice and competent young woman vet, attached to the practice just down the road, who did her best but you can't do much when medication is almost impossible to administer; so she came to attend to Elvire at the end yesterday afternoon.  It is very sad, but we are glad her twin brother Edmond is still in good form and we hope he still has some good time left though he also has heart murmurs now.

Elvire (with the white muzzle), still eager for food & life a week ago, front of queue at the kitchen door

Since Mary and I met we've almost always had a dog or dogs - Ziggy, Ruff and Trudy in England, then Trudy, Evie, Camel and Arlo here before the twins arrived with us almost 3 years ago.

The year has begun quietly otherwise for us, with a few warm-ish days, very little rain but often lots of cloud.  The other pet in our lives, the tortoise known as PierreAndCharles (one female, but there were 2 until the other escaped and we only realised they were both female after naming them).  the surviving one usually emerges from hibernation tgowards the end of April, so we wait and see...  Although we still light a cheering fire most evenings, the extra light now is welcome and spring flowers are beginning to show.

Our French conversation groups now keep us busy two mornings a week; Mary continues to play music in chamber groups and sees her cello teacher regularly, and we now have two wine groups, both monthly, a more formal one (we note scores for each wine) of 6 couples, which has met regularly since 2009, and a second recently started of anglophone people which is less formal and no less enjoyable. I also work regularly with the anglophone library in Montpellier.   

So we get out and do things as well as daily dog walks, but we do also spend a lot of time  quietly reading or listening to music and watching DVDs.  We are steadily revisiting both books and tv series we've enjoyed over many years - Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo series for Mary and Ken Follett's mediaeval sagas for me, and together rewatching David Jason in A touch of Frost and now, for the  3rd time I think, the excellent Foyle's War with a good cast and excellently written and researched by Anthony Horowitz.  I'm also a fan of non-fiction, and having read Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands some time ago and realised how topical that area is becoming with the current war in Ukraine, I have read with interest the more recent book by Bernard Wasserstein A small town in Ukraine: the place we came from, the place we went back to in which the author pieces together the often tragic lives of his Jewish family and the history of Krakowiec, the small town of the title.  In between whiles I have amused myself with some of the novels of Alexander McCall Smith, whose 44 Scotland Street, Mma Ramotswe and Sunday philosophy club series we've long enjoyed.  He has branched out in all sorts of directions, including a Scandinavian detective called Varg, and The private life of spies; all very entertaining.

       

Now Easter is almost on us and we have pascal lamb to enjoy from our weekly shopping trip today.   To all who read this, have a good Easter, a good spring.