autumn firework display at Villard Reymond

Writing my blog on a Sunday evening is my favourite way of distracting myself in the hours that follow Juan's departure for Yverdon. Now in darkness it feels worse. But I know my perspective will change tomorrow morning.

Paid work being light last week, unscheduled tasks took up the slack: eg I screwed myself up to tackle some shelving DIY, drilling into the breeze-block garage wall and blasting through the outer shell into - er - a void. Then, massive anti-climax, none of the rawl-plug thingies I'd been sold fitted. I found myself in familiar damsel-in-distress territory, on the phone to Jacques, and (thank goodness) we have a date for next week.

I was happy when Friday evening arrived, and not only Juan, but our Oxford friends Antje and John and the girls - now relocated to Lausanne, arrived from Switzerland (they birds of passage, en route for the Côte d'Azur). It was a riotous evening of games, paella and catching up. They had expected to spend Saturday morning with us, until discovering it was almost 5 hours of driving to get to St Tropez. Vaulnaveys is - and isn't - the south of France!

The rest of the weekend followed a well-oiled sequence: gardening (in gorgeous 25 degrees), walking, more gardening. I nearly persuaded Juan to come wine-tasting for the last day of Millésime 2012 but his troublesome wisdom teeth gave him a good excuse for staying home. So we sat tight, and watched The Third Man (1949). It's the third time I've seen it and now, no longer hanging on the plot outcome, I could really savour the post-war Vienna backdrop and the cinematography. There's no way the film would work in colour. The scene at the end in the sewer where Harry has run out of lives and Holly Martin closes in on him - and that final look they exchange - is pure, classic cinema. Love it.

Blessed with yet another weekend of sun and unseasonally high temperatures we chose a circuit last done with our friend Alison exactly 3 years ago: Villard Reymond to Villard Notre Dame. These photos give an impression of brooding bleakness. What we were aware of as we walked was the gorgeous thick blanket of russet beech, searing red maple, green-tinged yellow birch and deep green conifer and pine that draped luxuriantly over the shaly contours characteristic of the Oisans.



 



autumn-flowering crocus

So here's to the new week. It has started well: on returning from the Oisans we found that our neighbour had hurled a delivery of horse manure from his trailer onto our veggie patch. So we enjoyed a brief shit-shovelling fest before the evening wind-down.

AND... I have just found a year-round camp site near Zermatt! Yes, you can camp through the ski season, just off a cross-country piste. Tiens tiens. The Swiss are made of tough stuff. But are we...? Snow is forecast for next weekend. Watch this space.