Spring Broken

While in the UK last week and as the spring ‘weather’ wreaked havoc with plans and moods, I was asked, on more than one occasion, whether the weather was better in France ‘where I was’. I say asked, it was never really a question in the proper sense but more a plea for confirmation; that while England’s weather was doing its post-apocalyptic thing and clouds continued to gather like angry mobs on a street corner, all violent energy and aggression, there was somewhere – not too far away – where the sun was busy getting its thing on.
More often than not I was honest enough to admit that no, the weather was pretty dreadful at home in France too and this would be met with a sad shake of the head and a doleful look in the eyes as if this is indeed ‘the end of days.’ Sometimes the pleas for a better weather report were so desperate that I didn’t have the heart to be honest and just offered an ‘oh yes, apparently it’s glorious’ instead, not wishing to heap misery upon misery. The truth though, is that it is bloody awful here too.
I got back on Monday afternoon after 10 days away and I hardly recognised the place. The vast expanse of gravel that is the driveway was overgrown with weeds, with hardly any gravel showing at all. It’s always difficult to maintain a weed-free area in spring at the best of times anyway but this looked so set in and all encompassing that it almost appeared landscaped. The dogs, Toby and Gigi, emerged from the ‘new’ undergrowth soaking wet, looking like they’d been stranded on a remote island for years. Their greeting, though predictably warm, was out of keeping with the rest of the place. This is spring, I thought, where’s the birdsong? Where’s the background hum of agriculture? Where, for that matter, isspring? The only sound was the cold wind blowing across the driveway and attempting to rustle the leaves, which were too drenched to do any rustling and instead just hung there, occasionally sticking together like frozen bathers on a beach.
I walked past the deserted bikes and scooters towards the house. It felt eerily like the scene in Godfather Part II when Michael returns home to an empty house. I knew Natalie and the boys weren’t going to be there, Natalie’s sister and my two nephews were staying so they’d gone out for the day. Their plan had been to go to the zoo but not only was it too cold, they’d also reckoned, probably correctly, that most of the exotic species would refuse to come out and remain indoors in something of a mood. Instead they’d gone to a big, indoor soft play area about an hour away which, when it’s full, is exactly like the zoo anyway. Well, the chimp house at least.
Natalie’s sister and her boys were over to celebrate Maurice’s 8th birthday which is always a momentous occasion because, as Maurice was born shortly after we moved here, it signifies just how long we’ve been in rural France. Eight years ago when we moved in on a glorious winter’s day in January, the place looked very different indeed. The gravel was pristine for a start, the vast garden was just two acres of sparse lawn with some young, spindly fruit trees to break it up and there was only our Jack Russell running around the place. Now, eight years on and in the middle of the worst spring in living memory it looks like a cross between a poor man’s rainforest floor and a city farm. Junior’s initial excitement that someone was returning home and therefore he would be fed, quickly subsided into contempt when he saw that it was me and he went back to angrily mounting Ultime in a way that I actually think he meant would be insulting to me.
Eight years on and inside the house is very different too. Natalie, now that my stuff has been moved out to my office, has created a lovely ‘farmhousey’ home but ‘farmhousey’ seems to me to have become a euphemism for untidy and though I tried – I really did – not to look down at the floor when I went inside, a fateful thing to do for a ‘tidying fascist’ like me and which is bad enough when there are only three young boys around, but when it’s five...
I couldn’t help myself though and despite the house was empty I tutted loudly and started picking up discarded shoes which for some reason hadn’t been placed in the ‘shoe tidy box.’ There were clothes everywhere, the wet weather meant that any washing – five kids remember – was strewn all over the house in an attempt to get it dry as the pernicious and endless showers rendered the outdoor clothes line obsolete. It all meant that the house looked more like a jumble sale than a home, which it would anyway even if the weather wasn’t being so cruel. I am married to and have fathered a troupe of hoarders, nothing is thrown away just rearranged or moved from one room to another. This house felt massive when we moved in those eight years ago and now as the boys grow quickly and refuse to let go of anything it actually feels tight. If this place were a pair of jeans, we’d be the family ‘muffin top’ falling out over the sides.
I closed my eyes to the lot of it and went to bed. I should have stayed there. The week went on and the weather has got worse as it feels, simultaneously, like the walls of the house are slowly moving in. Tempers are frayed – mine mostly, though not exclusively – and the boys, five lively cousins desperate to be outside are confined indoors where ‘grumpy dad’/’grumpy Uncle Ian’ continues to lay down new draconian law after new draconian law, all regarding noise abatement and acceptable levels of tidiness.
And it’s about to get worse. The weather is forecast to remain miserable until at least the end of the month and yet this Saturday is Maurice’s birthday party. In previous years this ‘little people riot’ has been kept outside and remained a combination of trampoline, football and swimming pool. Not this year though. This year they’ll all be indoors. Indoors. All of them. Thanks spring, thanks a bloody lot. Is it too late to get work for the weekend? Hey! Promoters! Over here!