I'm missing my home in Bristol

I miss hearing the school children crashing down the hill by our house and the ruckus as they muck around at the crossroads, climbing on a neighbouring wall and arguing under the wonky lamp post outside our front gate. Once 4 boys stood by the lamp post to properly practise a rap that I'd heard them working on since beyond the top of the hill.

They are also a bit naughty, they pinched figs off next-doors tree last year and I suspect it was they not the wind behind the incident reported yesterday in an email from the Chinese lady living there at the moment

One thing want want to let you know. One of the roof on rock pillar at front door* fell down yesterday, due to the strong wind maybe. I found it was moved into the yard this morning by someone, I must say thanks because it is too heavy to move for me. I don't know how to deal with it, just leave it in the yard.

*trans note: front door = gate post in this instance

During a family gathering this week

my father and I took turns to relate the story about how he came to visit me in France in the early eighties: I was working as a goatherd in a remote woody-hilly place somewhere near the Pyrenees and had sent a letter home describing the route to get to my hut, it was illustrated with a map and my father used it to pay me a visit. *

it was a good story with lots of adventures  - there was one part that I had never heard before:

My father left me to get on with my goatherding and went off to do a few days walking in the area by himself. The first night he stayed in a B&B then continued on his way. A few hours into the day's walk he stopped by a hedge on a dirt track to scrump a few cherries when a van hove into sight and stopped next to him, there were two men inside - one from the previous night's boarding house, this man leaned out of his window and said   

Monsieur, you left this at our 'ouse

and handed over some greyish white fabric that my father recognised as his own, rather unfashionable, underpants

* the map and another version of this story is here

Boundaries

This is a map of my world these days, the film crew occupy three of the two dozen wooden cabins that accommodate the lodge guests, we each have a little fenced-in beer porch outside our front door.

A central wooden building contains the bar and restaurant, there is a Look-Out! tower on top of the restaurant and a fiendish pool outside the bar. The pool looks really good - new guests jump in with the anticipation of a refreshing swim only to find that the water level comes to just above a grown-ups knees. The children have great fun though, there are little islands to leap around on and I spent a happy hour watching three Dutch children playing an interesting drowning/life-saving game there the other day.

Apart from my foam- and battery-buying forays I am confined to the lodge boundaries and have yet to visit the National Park.

Due to the proximity of the park and the quantity of animals that could present us with so many exotic ways to die, we are requested not to venture out of sight of the cabins on our own. I can hear a crashing sea, metres from my cabin but I can’t go and look at it without company.

The Camera Boys are subject to the same restrictions as everyone else, when they pack up the vehicles for the shoot they must include a park warden and everyone stays inside the cars until they get back home again.



Langurs come to play on our roofs, usually a great big herd of them descend and bounce around noisily for an hour before moving on to the next one.