Granny C was angry. She wanted to see more of us. She had come to stay and we weren't paying her enough attention. She knew we had planned to clear the thistles from the meadow to allow the poppies to re-grow like last year [Field of Glory, 15th August, 2011] but spending hours digging each…
Nul points
Our dog was an opportunistic, lovable rascal. She would often take herself off for walks, as dogs did in those days, and in her sorties managed to endear herself to countless neighbours. Although they knew full well that she belonged to someone else, in the hours she was away she would go into some of…
Talk to the animals
“What do you think Ginger?” Silence …then.. “Ginger thinks your tie is very nice.” Nothing much wrong on the surface, but this was Alice, a family friend in her 70s, discussing my new tie with her cat. Alice was not mad, nothing ‘medically’ wrong, just quirky and a cat lover. I would have been around…
Shell shocked
Just a short walk down the road from our cottage in France there is a most beautiful beach. It stretches in a long curve as far as the eye can see and at low tide it takes 10 minutes simply to get to the sea for a paddle. The sand is a fine white-yellow and…
Harvest home
The last days of the summer holidays were frenetic. Jobs put off from back in July had to be done. The saplings needed stouter stakes to help them withstand the ferocious winter winds – this took one morning. The overlong reeds in the field needed cutting down – another morning. There was the usual cleaning…
Last words
By their very nature the last words people utter carry a very special significance. To those who are close, they can bring solace or can engender guilt and anxiety, but whichever, they are likely to linger indefinitely. They somehow encapsulate our memories of the dead person, even becoming a sort of personification. And there are…
A difficult teenager
It was going to be a difficult week – or so I was told. Our niece, now 16, was coming to stay with us in France. It involved quite a complicated journey and beforehand there were endless texts and phone calls from her Dad (her parents are divorced) to check everything was allright. Finally I…
The parable of the humble shoe lace
Some things are important more for what they represent than for what they are, and for me one such is the humble shoelace. These long, thin and usually featureless strands have been threaded through shoe eyelets for over a thousand years and have changed little. There has been competition - buckles, elastic, zips, plastic and…
Careless talk
Last week the phone rang. It was my very worried friend Ron seeking advice. He told me how he had just learned that his elderly mother had developed a life threatening medical condition. For many years she had been taking a blood-thinning drug following a heart operation. Earlier that evening Nurse X had collared Ron…
Home sweet home
Not for the first time our house has been invaded. I am not talking about uninvited mice or ants but about invited builders. It started at the end of March and was to finish in 8 weeks. With all our careful planning this was going to be bearable but, in reality, it has been the…
The Joe Collier Blog 