I have recently been testing and trying pretty much every potion and lotion available in the local pharmacy. Whatever nasty viral bug was doing the rounds, it homed in on me ten days ago, and buried itself in my lower right lung. In doing so, it reduced me to an exhausted deflated coughing chunk of misery - and that was on one of the better days.
But French Doctors don't give up easily and our GP has run through the entire gamut of antibiotics, steroids, pro-biotics, lung inhalers, cough syrup and pain killers, and I think I can honestly say that things are on the mend at last. Not having an appetite is no fun and being unable to even contemplate a glass of wine at 6pm is worrying. This too will pass I am sure and my friends who are also sick and who are muttering "Swine Flu" behind closed doors will understand that I had a viral infection and not a flu bug. I did tell someone the other day in an email that I wondered if I had Seine Flu - a Freudian slip maybe!
One thing about steroids is that you are up with the lark (and in fact I beat him out of bed by about an hour this morning). Sitting here quietly typing, I heard a large splash and saw the black tip of a tail disappearing out through the open side of the back garden. This explains the upturned water lily plants and the loss of water every morning. Some big daft dog is popping in for his morning ablutions which must be scaring the heck out of our soul surviving goldfish. The dog is welcome to a dip but I envision a claw going through the plastic liner any day now, so I guess the net had better go back on.
We purchased five new goldfish at the end of April and for five days they swam about and larked in and around the plants and rocks, and then the temperature dropped and they all vanished. Even one little survivor from last year (called Lazarus as he had once been baled out and chucked into the rockery by mistake) had joined the group and it was all very merry, but we seem to be back to just one lonely goldfish, so maybe that darn dog is an expert fisherman. We even had a couple of crested hoopoes turn up for a dip and they were a nice reminder of our Africa days.
The little blue tits are working their parental socks off this week. We keep the fat balls suspended under the mulberry tree and on occasions, there are no less than three frantic parents chipping away at them while their chicks urge them on from the nests just under the tiles on the roof. Once again this year, I failed to hear a cuckoo. There is a very clever wood dove nearby who I think runs an agency of "wanabe cuckoo callers" and every so often I would stop in my tracks and think I had heard the real deal, but they have obviously been driven out of the immediate surrounds by the increasing size of the village.
There is a possible move afoot but more of this anon. Suffice it to say that it would result in us hearing a good many more cuckoos next year and a lot fewer buzz bikes.
