Naked ambition

Hello and welcome to the latest blog on May 7^th 2021

With Spring in the air many people are thinking about their gardens. We receive numerous e-mails from gardening companies trying to sell us goods of a horticultural nature but one stood out from the crowd this week. The title was’ World naked gardening day’ and the gist of the email was as follows – a fun, positive and light hearted movement designed to celebrate the human body and nature. Get out there and attack those weeds in the buff!

Intrigued, I found myself doing a bit more of an internet search and learnt that this is a worldwide movement, founded in the USA in 2015, and that this particular event takes place on or around the 1^st May depending on which country you live in. It is mainly popular with the nudist movement and there were a selection of very tasteful photos, with strategically placed pots, trees and gardening implements!

Given that we live in a very secluded spot it would be entirely possible for me to indulge myself and wander about naked for the day, but May 1^st came and went and I still had all my clothes on. Perhaps next year……

A bit more research showed that the nudist movement has a plethora of special days to celebrate in no more than the skin you were born with. There is the ‘running of the nudes’ in Pamplona in Spain each July, the ‘Ritual of the brave’ in the Philippines in December, and the World Body Painting Festival in Austria in June. You can join in the World Naked Bike Ride at various times of the year worldwide ( how can that possibly be comfortable ?) or enjoy the Roskilde Music Festival in Denmark in June. The summer solstice parade in Seattle celebrates in style with floats where people have the option to be dressed, or not, which is led by the Painted Naked Cyclists group, a non-political, artistic, clothing-optional bike ride that traditionally opens the parade.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg, at which point I realised I should get on with something more productive – perhaps a bit of fully clothed weeding.

The only other thing of note this week was that our little cat, Blackie, disappeared. This is very unusual as she is always close to the cabin. Eventually, and by pure luck, I happened to be looking at the trees up at the top of the field and saw what looked like a large crow in the top branches of an oak tree. Fishing out the binoculars it became clear that the crow was in the fact the cat, balanced on a perilously thin branch and looking very unhappy. No amount of cajoling would bring her down so I left her there and hoped she would summon up the courage to move over night.

The farm across the lane has four cats, which the owner lovingly describes as mignon, the French word for ‘sweet’ or ‘cute’. They are in fact a bunch of thugs, coming over to our field in the night and terrorising our cats, particularly Blackie who must have been the runt of her litter as even now she is only just bigger than a kitten. On so many nights we are woken by bloodcurdling shrieks as the marauding cats decide its time to come over and beat the neighbours up, often ending in tiny mewling noises of defeat and surrender from Blackie which have me hurtling out of bed, grabbing my liquid spray gun (my second weapon of choice after a taiser which I don’t have) and, still half asleep, lurching wildly out the door and spraying the gun haphazardly in the direction of all the noise.

On this particular night I slept through soundly. No Blackie for them to terrorize, which meant she was still up the tree. I got up the next morning, wondering how I was going to rescue her, but then she appeared, looking a little sheepish and sorry for herself. The family was back together again.

And that is all I have for you this week. Michael left yesterday to embark upon the long drive up to check on Olivia and won’t be back for another few days so I am here alone and not much is happening. The weather is all over the place, rainy today, but the temperature is shooting up to 30 degrees over the weekend and then we have three days of thunderstorms to clear the air again.

I shall spend my time wisely and begin planning our first wild camping trip away, which we will do as soon as the weather calms down again and once Michael has had a chance to recover from driving over 2,000 km there and back from Olivia. Maddie seems to be on the mend so we will be heading for the coast, at the border with Spain, and then turn north towards Bayonne and on up to Bordeaux. It feels so good just to write that down, a promise of getting on the road again, almost within our grasp. And then at last I will have some new pictures for you.

But that is it for now. Hope all is well. Take care.

MJ