Winter again

Here in the Auvergne, winter or something very like it, has returned. There is snow up on the montagnes above us, although lower down in the valley, the grass is green and trees are coming into leaf. Some of the cattle are out in the fields. Yesterday we went for a drive to Salers and back down to the Vallee du Mars via the Col de Neronne, which was only just about open. We met a snow-clearing lorry on our way down; fortunately we'd stopped for a moment at a pull-in, otherwise there wouldn't have been room for both vehicles I don't think we'll be repeating the trip until the weather clears up a lot, or we our next visit later in the year. There has been almost non-stop rain for the past week, apart from a couple of afternoons when it has dried  up a bit. Most mornings the cloud level is not much higher than the houses in the village.

A little light reading

As an antidote to reading books narrated by young boys, I picked up Katie Fforde's Summer of Love on a recent visit to my local library. I like Katie's books, they are light, cheerful and have a happy ending. I know that people in the book world are saying that chick-lit is dying but Katie fforde has been writing fro quite a long time and shows no sense of slowing down - long may she continue. Chick-lit was only a name dreamed by someone who possibly had never read it - and I'm not sure the "lit" bit applies to much of it, entertaining as it is. Summer of Love is vintage Katie Fforde, with a single mother, Sian Bishop, as heroine, running her own small business and moving to the countryside to provide a better school for her son. She eventually meets Gus Beresford, her neighbour's explorer son, recently returned from his latest adventure. But Sian and Gus have met before, so the twists and turns of the plot begin. Great fun.
Michael Wright's C'est La Folie was recommended by a friend, after she had read his articles in the Telegraph newspaper. As he lives in France in the Limousin region, next to the Auvergne region, I thought it a very sympatique read. Much of the life he describes is rural, somewhat isolated and very different from English city life. We are heading off to the Auvergne ina few days, so it had many resonances.