Shock as River Faby loses Squonk-Quark Factor

All this year we having been suffering a prolonged overdose of weather: Helas, il pleut; helas, il neige; helas, il pleut some more; helas il fait pretty much anything except beau or du soleil.

What we've all been looking for is the sort of blue thing with passing white bits, as visualised in the top picture. It has vamoosed, been sunk without trace or possibly dematerialised by rogue Klingons.

During April, we thought we'd finally got rid of the never-ending winter when a deafening outburst of squonking and quarking in the Faby heralded the traditional return of the Legendary Pyrenean Bonking Frog.

Basking on the terraces of the Cafédefa, we listened with deep joy to this welcome and much-loved cacophony, redolent as it is of the heady dreams of coming summer. Steadily it rose to a pre-orgasmic chorus of glurks with squelch dream topping.

Elsewhere too, the natural world was awakening. The Scops owls of Fa resumed that characteristic plonque! noise which is their trademark. Not exactly a complex or rousing song, it has to be admitted,but sonorous, reliable . . . thick.

All night long, middle-aged couples who had given up sex, were kept awake by the passionate screaming of nightingales who hadn't.

And suddenly . . . sploosh, then silence. The Faby rose to a mighty and abominable torrent, (middle pic) as it rained, snowed, rained some more, and continued to be generally wet and bloody miserable for about a fortnight; the river only regaining its normal somnolent sense of self (bottom pic) a few days ago.

The bonking frogs were all swept away in the maelstrom. They probably got to the post-coital fag somewhere round about Narbonne.

Chez moi, we actually lit a fire on May 15 (Wot??); a record by a more than handsome margin. In again a few days, we might spot the odd squonk, a lone and teasing quark. I just wouldn't bet on it.