Ghosts in the wind.

This is not what you think, not even close.

Hello dear ones, thank you so much for sticking around, I’ve been a little quiet I know. From the blazing inferno that has become my hill since I last wrote, I welcome you all, albeit with a sloth-like lethargy that is a wearisome coat to be wearing. I fear Mother Nature has a taste for something roasted, not that she’ll find much more than skin and bone on my skinny butt!

Good grief it’s hot here, even the chickens are panting…

On June 25th, the hottest day of the year so far—the day we sheared the sheep—a storm sneaked up over the hill. Later we learn it was a mini-tornado, but in the moment it felt like something older, stranger, the valley was held breathless beneath a sudden, furious wind. It tore through the landscape, uprooting, snapping, flinging trees aside with abandonment, without regard for the devastating aftermath left in its wake. Across the Aveyron, and twenty-eight other departments, the land was rearranged.

On the lane, five more oaks lay still, uprooted, their long lives brought to a brutally sad end. Plum, ash, elm, cherry, chestnut—young trees, growing trees—laid in a tangle of branches and leaves far from their original earth homes.

In falling, the huge oaks brought down two pylons, mortally crippled they left Le Bassin without power for twenty-four hours, far longer was the wait for many others. Though Bravo to the EDF men who worked through hours of searing heat to bring back normality.

The fibre-optic cables still hang in the trees like forgotten ribbons. The WiFi—dependability never its strong point—gave up entirely and hasn’t yet returned. We wait for the technician, the silence stretches on.

This was a week ago last Wednesday and I am far from finished clearing the debris. In between I have been trying to write you the account of a wild fifteen minutes, editing the dateline with each attempt, always with interruptions. So, today I am posting regardless of mistakes or further editing before I forget such a storm even happened.

If only…

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“But you know, as I do, that the storm will pass, And that the implacable sun doesn't simply stop, When obscured by a dark, pernicious cloud… ” Mauricio Rosencof

25 June 2025

The distant—not so—dulcet tones of B, my sheep shearer, announce his arrival before I catch even a glimpse of his—obligatory?—white Renault van chugging up the hill, black fumes choking already breathless air. He has, and I say this kindly, a voice that carries; he has stopped at the bottom of the hill and I can hear almost every word of the conversation he is shouting at my neighbour.

He arrives promptly carrying his habitual strong smell of lanolin and, mingled faintly within, a high note of sheep poo. Both once again proceed him. He flings open the rusty rear doors to his van, pulls on green overalls I swear could walk to the field on their own, then turns to bellow a jolly ‘¹Salut, comment vas-tu ?’ smiling at me while pulling out his equally odorous canvas holdall.

‘²Salut B, ça va chaudement !’ I reply, also smiling, theatrically wiping of my brow. ‘³Mais ça fait grand plaisir de te revoir malgré la chaleur, mes petites laineuses vont être ravies !’ They aren’t, are about to be even less so but are completely oblivious to the fact.

I have already set up a tarpaulin under the shade of the Hornbeam, the summer field is marginally less of a furnace than below. Ice cold water and glasses in a bucket of yet more ice cold water, an extension lead for his clippers are also waiting. Four sheep, stare at us, their adored faces anxious; it is now nearly eight hours since I enticed them into their temporary enclosure with a bucket filled with fancy titbits—apples, toast, nuts, grain pilfered from the chicken feed, Mirabelle plums, windfalls they love—a necessary deception. It was a now or never scenario; spend hours chasing them, or lie. In this heat, for them in full winter coats or us in as little clothing as is decently possible, running is not even a remote option. Mercifully they fell for my trick and have been waiting all day, irritably bleating and head butting each other. They have no notion of the reason they have been so long contained. None of them have ever been shorn before, even if they had they wouldn’t remember.

B glances into their makeshift pen—actually the chicken run but you don’t need to know that I am not a perfect shepherdess. He shakes his head with an expansive ‘Merde!’, asks why I didn’t call him last year. I explain, with tears I can’t stop. At once he is sympathetic, doesn’t shout a reply, simply pats my arm with the kindness of someone who knows of such carnage saying, ‘⁴Allez, il y a du boulot, mais on va y arriver.’

And we do, in a little under an hour of ripe language—even riper aromas—all four sheep are shorn and loose in the field again. They are, as they are always, entirely lost!

As we three, me, my beloved and B—raucous and cheery as ever once the hard labour is over—lay down tools, watch the hilarity of four sheep, relieved of their thick woollen coats, confused as to who is who or even if they are who they were—sheep often don’t recognise themselves or each other for a while after they’ve been shorn, they even look backwards at their own behinds then jump in surprise at their new shape—a breath of wind prickles our glistening faces; a soothing balm we each gratefully turn to bathe in.

The storm that arrives comes from nowhere, and everywhere.

It is a strangeness to see fleeces lifting off the ground, one could almost believe the sheep, not an hour ago wrapped within, did not want to leave, that the ghosts of their form had been left inside.

This is my thought as cool breezes become a gale, as leaves flurry past us, as the long grasses, feverfew and lemon balm under the old cherry tree, already wilted from the heat, give up their fight with a final, defeated whisper to lay flattened on the ground, as the slates on the barn roof rattle. The gale becomes a malicious squall, a branch snaps, falling from the Tilleul still in blossom, the branch and its scent land at our feet in a cloud of pollen. The sheep scatter for shelter in the bamboo, the tarpaulin blows away—we do not recover it, we still haven’t—I run after sheep phantoms, making their way to the woodland in a strange galumphing fashion thinking, at any other time this would be hilarious, at any other time I would film them.

I gather up wandering wool ghosts, the reek of lanolin, roll up the extension lead, B grabs his tools, my beloved dashes for the bucket and glasses as the first mighty clap of thunder rumbles down the hill then returns without ceasing on repeat. Every movement of muscle we make is being fought against a maelstrom now, suddenly and violently hurling branches, loose slates and our failing strength into infinite elsewhere.

We run. Malefic darkness gathers up the remains of the sunlight. Another branch crashes through the Tilleul. As we close the gate to the field behind us a long dead branch from the walnut tree, trapped in its high canopy four years ago, is released from the bare thread holding it in place. It lands, pre-sawn on the ground—I give brief thanks for one small mercy—another lands on the fence just behind us. I turn one last time to ensure four sheep are safe. They are still hidden, cowering, motionless within the tall stems of bamboo, skinny statues anchored by fear, they will move no further.

With difficulty we reach the barn, drop everything in a woollen ghost pile, then run again, fly up eleven steps to the comfort and quiet of a kitchen inside four thick stone walls, closing the door on a pure and wild bedlam behind us.

The power in the house is out but an ebony black sky outside, overcharged with electricity, flashes a frantic jitterbug around the hill like a disco ball on amphetamines released from its chain. It is light enough to see each of us breathing a smile of incredulous relief.

We are safe.

And, the sheep are shorn.

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With unavoidably belated love

PS

David E. Perry

wrote me this;

“A tornado, on a hill in France? Good grief! I grew up with them, in Oklahoma and then Tennessee, knew to run to the culvert, to open all the windows in the house to equalize the pressure, to hide in the bathtub. But tearing up your hill, halfway around the world. I fear that we have, collectively, really, really pissed off the gods. Strange things everywhere…”

I reply in sad agreement to the latter, to the former; evidently, I have much to learn about what to do in a tornado. Though I dearly wish it weren’t necessary.

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1. ‘Hi, how are you?’ NB since our last meeting we seem to have silently accepted the familiar ‘tu’ instead of the more formal ‘vous’, a fact that delights me!

2. ‘Hi B, I’m good, hot!’ NB There is no real translation for the word chaudement meaning ‘hotly’.

3. ‘But it's great to see you again despite the heat, my little woolly ones are going to be delighted!’

4. ‘Come on, it’s a big job but we’ll manage.’