Sunday morning, not quite 8 am. What a week it has been!
We’ve forfeited our regular Sunday morning 12km family walk due to Thandi-belle currently languishing on my bed, as well as needing to prepare for a braai lunch with friends. The sun is shining again, and instead of yours truly simply scrolling through my phone with my tush seated firmly on my bed, I’ve decided to bring my laptop to my kitchen terrace to profit from the sun, and use the opportunity to write.
It has taken all of 5 minutes for my coffee to get cold; this spring has taken time to emerge here in Europe and the mornings are still laced with a tinge of frost or an icy wind- the sun falling on to my back is deceptive, and the cashmere wrap I’m wearing over a thin running jacket looks as ludicrous as you can imagine. (When you have a pile of clothes lying in a corner that are not quite dirty enough to be washed and also serve as a reminder to go running.)
I had anticipated sitting down this morning to finish up writing a recipe for you, but we have a little news that I thought I would share.
Living in this little part of happy suburbia that we do, with our terrace overlooking an open stretch of agricultural lands, we see the locals who come through for dog walking, exercise or just fresh air. We’ve always greeted eachother with a “Bonjour” and happy smile, but with our broken French, longer conversations haven’t been common. Until about a month ago, when one of the dog walking regulars walked past with a new little puppy. Alex and Beth were besotted quicker than you can say “West Highland Terrier’, which is what the little puppy (Bonhomme, Bono for short) is. While we’ve been home on confinement, the girls have kept a keen eye out for when Bono’s owner (and her neighbor) would walk by. They would disappear from our garden so quickly, like an ice-cream truck had passed, and then spend 15 minutes playing and talking to the neighbors.
Watching the girls interact with the locals’ dogs (Beth has also been helping to walk her friends dog twice a week after school this year) has sat on our minds: we have had no pets in our home for nearly 8 years now. I’m not one to necessarily seek out comfort from a pet, although I have had a few very special cats in and out of my life over 43 years. However, having a pet at home can be rewarding I suppose, but the notion of cat-litter trays in an apartment leaves me with a sense of dread, so having a cat in our old apartment wasn’t going to work for us. When we finally moved out here we were told quite explicitly that we were forbidden to get a cat, as the owner didn’t want the smell of cat business being soaked up in to the walls, like a dirty nicotine habit. (Or such was the idea of me reading between the lines).
So life continued. We had nothing else tying us to the apartment, and could up and away at a moments notice, should we decide to go away for a weekend or something. And in 4 years, I can count our holidays almost on just one hand.
And then last week when hubby was on holiday and we happened to have a household of little kids running around (we were babysitting), he sat down at our computer one afternoon and says “I wonder what Leboncoin has to offer as far as puppies go?” I may or may not have sent a shifty side-eyes glance at him, but who am I to say no to loooking at puppy pictures, right?
I clearly wasn’t quite aware of how certain he was of getting a puppy for the house. Perhaps if the advert for those über-cute Old English Bulldogs hadn’t popped up, we wouldn’t be in this position (toilet training, poor sleep, the inability to get out for a cardio walk, or sit and just write without any disruptions). Or perhaps the fact that they were there is a sign that this is what the duP’s should be doing.
What would have been a carefully weighed up decision process had it fallen in my lap, thereby losing the chance to adopt one of those ever-so-cute puppies, turned out to be almost spontaneous in it’s arrival. Why wouldn’t we get a dog? We’re old and mature enough for it, we’re mostly successful in raising children, it’s unlikely we’re going to end up with an aggressive- pee-ing everywhere- neurotic creature that we would grow to regret. Having a pet is as normal as waking up to the morning sun, the idea of another little creature to share our home with, to have greet us at the door at the end of the day, to have crawl onto our lap for affection (yeah, okay. I still have that from The Drama and she’s 10 already), and who needs to consider the ‘what about and what ifs’ when we already have children and an apartment garden to take care of?
And then, between looking for puppies online on Thursday, we brought Thandi home on Monday, vaccinated, with papers and checked up by the vet. She’s an Old English Bulldog, will grow to no more than 40cm tall, she loves affection, and sleeps happily on Alex’s lap. She is friendly with the neighborhood dogs, who we have introduced her to very quickly, and the neighbors themselves are all in love with her as much as we are. New friendships are being built up on and we have quickly slotted into the menagerie of dogs that converge outside our terrace of an evening. It’s a whole new world for us!
We’re all for taking Thandi outside for walks (and toiletry detail), but I can’t help but wonder if we’ve been a little too zealous in our expectations. Firstly, when we leave the warmth of our lounge, we carry her outside, out the gate at the bottom of the garden, where we put her down so that she can sniff out the scene. She has other ideas: to rather sit at the gate waiting to be let back in, where she’ll beeline for the terrace and back into the lounge. It involves picking her up and carrying her a distance off to try again. This is repeated 3 or 4 times until we have pee success. When it comes to longer walks, early in the week we managed to get her to follow us a distance of 500 metres, but by yesterday evening, she was having none of that, and at every opportunity, would turn and head for home. Looking at her little pad-lets this morning, they have roughened up considerably: did we push the walks too much that we have hurt her paws?
Having a puppy in our home is not far off having a new baby. Are we doing the right thing? Or are we creating a spoilt monster? It’s a lot tougher than the French make it out to be. (Dogs in apartments are a very real thing- how do they do it?) In any case, we’re in it to win it, and if you’re looking for puppy content pictures and stories, look for Thandi on the ‘gram @ Thandi_belle. In the mean time, here are some photos taken in the short week we’ve had her. We still have lots to learn: she has rejected half of her 6pm dinner last night and by 9pm was searching high and low for something- which may or may not have been a food related, but meal times are meal times, or so they say? Terrified as we are to have her toilet business in our home, getting her settled last night was exhausting- I promise, Alex and Beth were never like this. (4 am wake up calls aside perhaps). She loves a lap to fall asleep in, and has wised up to going outdoors against her wishes. I feel like putting it out there- do you have any tips?
In other news, off the back of Hot Cross Buns that sold like erm, hot cakes…(sorry, unavoidable pun) I’ve had enquiries into a wider variety of home baked items that are not French. As a result I have somewhat casually started a small supply of English brunch items, as well as some cakes and I guess anything else you happen to ask me for. These have been keeping me busy for the last week, so any opportunity for writing has fallen into second place. (It’s been 2 days since I started this before breakfast on Sunday and I am currently sitting on a bus commuting across the city after ‘doing a delivery’. It has really been so long since I’ve had the opportunity to do this 😂).
Beth has returned to school after our confinement and Alex will return next week. It appears that non essential shops remain closed. As always, I remain uncertain as to when I will return to regular work.
In social media updates, I’ll pop those in here so that when I get around to recipe writing, I won’t need to deviate around ‘news’
April 14th. Babysitting
A simple gesture: holding one hand in another; hair flying behind and a flicking up up of an ankle as they hurtled riotously across the meadow, their laughter was swallowed by the vast blue sky.
For to have this in a generations time would be but a sweet dream. Should we stay true to this moment, think about where these generous hearts will be one day.
April 19th.
(Is the word ‘meadow’ a European thing? Do we even have meadows in South Africa, or just paddocks and fields?)
April 24th.
That’s 400 days.
Odd. Days.
Odd as in roughly. Odd as in strange too.
It’s a stark reminder what most of us are capable of.
Waking up every morning to tackle the challenges that come our way.
Finding the resources to wade through minefields of emotions that would conventionally lie below the day to day stuff.
Strength to stand up to a uncertainty of childcare vs work from home. The uncertainty of financial stability. The inability to seek comfort in our friendships.
For some, who have hit wall after wall, I wish there was something I could offer to make it more bearable. If it’s as simple as a warm embrace of assurance that you have endured this far, then take this sunrise and (finally) flowering lilac bush as a source of positivity.
I’ve hit a wall or 2 myself: nothing more serious than fatigue of repetitive mundaneness. I wallow for a day and then pick up a book to read, a pen to a scribble and note a recipe, an apron to be able to make clouds of flour and shining sugar spread around my kitchen. I can pick up my camera and point it at my children, a flower emerging from the cold hard soil, wildlife in the fields, the setting sun, the rising sun.
How grateful am I that I can stay home, assured of financial stability, not have to stress about stuff, and be creative just for an outlet of strength.
A new day will dawn. It will come. Maybe it will bring something easier. Maybe it won’t.
For now, just breathe. You have come so far.
Without futher ado, let me wrap this up. Today (Wednesday morning already) I need to go for a run and I have an order of crumpets and English pancakes to make up. What are you up to? Anything fun? 😉
Take care of yourselves, all my love.
G.
Xxx
Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals 
Congratulations! We are huge animal lovers.
But am I missing something or did you not say what breed she is? And no photos?
Thank me Nadia! She’s an Old English Bulldog- something I appeared to have missed 😳.
Somehow the photo gallery got removed when I published. If you open the article online you’ll see some pictures there.