It hasn't stopped raining since last November. As I write this soggy epistle, il continue à bollerk it down.
Que je m'ennui . . .
Les vieux canards or old ducks of Fa tell me it's been the wettest winter for 50 years and it ain't over yet. A couple of days back in not very gay Paree, they recorded 3°C, the lowest temperature in May since 1868.
Personally I'm getting desperate enough to launch a conspiracy theory, and for me that is seriously desperate.
I notice this all started round about the time that the World Didn't End last year in Bugarach. As the great day of the Apocalypse-free Apocalypse drew near, it began to rain in earnest, consummately even, resulting in a less than impressive turnout by the not entirely dedicated Loons of Armageddon.
The weird thing is that . . . it hasn't stopped since. Do you think someone is trying to tell us that the world ought to have ended? Certainly it seems daily closer to dissolving.
You may be wondering why these reflections, in a puddle so to speak, are accompanied by a picture of the church clock in Fa. That's the next stage in my argument: Our clock has gone wonky.
Normally the bells of Fa dong out solidly and confidently on the hour, every hour. In accordance with local custom, they even do it twice. Quite a lot of church clocks do that round here, presumably in case you didn't hear them the first time.
The clock at Fa does a highly impressive 24-dong double midnight, resulting in the standing instruction that insomniac visitors to Boulevard de La Pinouse shouldn't try bothering to get sleep until five past twelve.
My guests often wonder how I stand the bells but after 11 years I'm used to them and it's bloody chaos when they don't work. I find it particularly luxurious in the early morning to listen out for the dongs, and to know it's still an hour before I have to get up. No bells and you haven't a clue where you are, it's just not comfy any more.
I first suspected something was wrong one Sunday morning when I heard dong, dong . . . pause . . . dong . . . pause . . . dong, dong . . . silent collapse. I realised that it couldn't possibly be 5-ish AM, as the sun was unexpectedly percolating through the shutters. It does very, very occasionally still do this.
This was quickly confirmed by the klaxonated whinge which heralds the bread van each morning at 8am. That's on the early side for a Sunday, and explains why I have long eschewed hangovers. I'm not particularly saintly but with that racket going on, you haven't a chance of sleeping it off.
Incidentally, for many years the klaxon had a distinctly Motown ambiance, being exactly on the opening chord of Mary Wells's My Guy. Presumably it eventually clapped out because these days it's just an amorphous noise.
So there you have it, Captain, the bells have buggered their dilithium crystals. Strictly-speaking, this ought to be due to a deep fault in the space-time continuum but may be merely because the mechanism has rotted solid under the pressure of constant immersion . . . which is a tad too prosaic for any self-respecting conspiracy theorist.
Suddenly we had two days of sun. I promptly caught a vile cold. Curiously I haven't had one all winter, presumably because all our local bacteria either died of exposure or were too frozen solid to replicate.
Then today it rained again. I finally gave in and lit a fire. Près qu'à la fin de bloody mai? This planet is going to les chiens . . .
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