Great excitement here at La Godefrere as we bag our first mole in the great fight back. We have noticed all week an increasing number of mole hills around the orchard and it soon became clear that strategy number 1 was failing. Strategy number 1 is of course my major offensive armed with tractor and songbook. Despite much revving of engines and some truly awful singing we found that the moles must have improved their defence mechanisms and now be wearing ear defenders or maybe they had just g...

In fact the past 2 weeks have been very wet and gloomy. In typical fashion Mrs. Parish was complaining we did not have enough rain and the garden was dying. Now of course we have had too much rain and Mrs. Parish has been cooped up inside which is not good. A great deal of pacing up and down like a caged tiger and grumbling. Fortunately there has been sewing to complete so Mrs. Parish has taken herself off to the sewing garret to make some cushions for Ian and Emma.

The bad weather has led to...

After last week’s somewhat esoteric blog, we are back to normal (or what passes for normal here). Moggie has excelled himself this week by catching a mole. He did have one a couple of weeks ago but we were suspicious, that he may have just found it. This week no doubts as he proudly brought back the mole from the allotment and proceeded to play with it. I am told that moles taste revolting and therefore cats won’t eat them. I’m not sure who tries out mole tasting to find this out. Moggi...

As you might tell from this week’s heading I have had too much time to think. This is dangerous and leads to all sorts of strange ideas. There I was on Wednesday sat in the garden looking at the orchard when an apple fell to the ground. For me this led to a bout of swearing and cursing the fruit trees that create fallen apples and pears that I then have to go around and pick up, causing extreme back ache and regular battles to fight off the wasps. Sir Isaac Newton in the same situation, 300...

As reported last week my daughter Jo and her partner Nicky were here for a week and they were keen to take Mrs. Parish and me on in La Godefrere games. After last week’s blog we were honours even and this week we managed to cement our class on the pool table, continued to be absolute rubbish at darts and then tragedy struck on the Petanque terrain. I say terrain with some exaggeration as we have to play Petanque on the grass in the orchard. This has several disadvantages. As we have no rece...