Already Lost in France
THE BYRE
‘Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle
the cow jumped over the moon...’
Heads and horns up, the task we’re presented with amounts to a tad more than getting a cow to jump over the moon.
Twenty-five in the druid animal deck, cow (or Bo) arrives just before horse, paying homage to all things mother. She also helps us recognize what is unhomogenized ‘whole fat milk’ – both metaphorical and physical. She takes life lightly and slow. That’s a recipe for something really nourishing. May be we’ll find it here?
A cow’s and women’s gestation period are the same. If ever a creature is part of our milk family, it’s a bovine. Perhaps today cow energy is even more necessary to gentle us down and allow for rumination on the good fodder of nature?
Ironically, I happen to be lactose intolerant – the white stuff clogging up a slightly asthmatic chest. Most unhelpful when you’re on your way to a place where – aside from flour, sugar and tea bags – the command is to live solely from the land where yogurt and full cream milk are a staple.
Welcome to ‘La Combe’ – Marthe and her Chris’s place. It’s as much mountain as farm and eco-center. We’re dropped off at the top of a stony drive where there’s no signal. I have packed little, warned it will be hot. Aside from a couple of T-shirts and jeans, I shove in a lime green flowing sarong number which can be worn as a long skirt or wrapped and tied above my chest.
I’m still in romantic mode, but not for long.
My fiancé’s luggage includes a massive suitcase containing his costume – he will be playing the part of the evil horse-buyer in the inter-species production of Black Beauty. That's why we're all assembling here. The knotted brow of my lover confirms he is also carrying an even heavier case of apprehension. Rightly so.
Yes, horses, sheep, dogs, hens and a cow are the main characters.
But that is only a small part of my Chris’s role in this story.
Chris B (to distinguish him from Marthe’s Chris) is directing the production. This would better be defined as co-directing with Marthe, Dr Marthe Kiley-Worthington. That’s challenge enough – but none of his human cast are actors…
They say holidays are stressful. And although this is no holiday for Chris, he’s already out of his comfort zone finding us dumped in the middle of nowhere without a signal (I didn’t bother taking my mobile since I believed - erroneously - I was on holiday).
This remit is unlike any he’s ever undertaken, despite having directed and presented Hereford’s Diamond Day the year before with aplomb. HRH Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh had happily - and extraordinarily - overrun their schedule, much to the dismay of a battalion of organizers and delight of the City and its residents.
Chris gets a message through to Marthe having found a skein of connectivity by standing on a boulder.
A spluttering truck lumbers up the mountain and we find ourselves descending into a valley. We pass a large barn on our right which will turn out to be our theater. On a further three or four hundred yards a few squat stone buildings nestle beneath a couple of fields which disappear under mountainside now towering directly above us.
We have arrived!
#arriving #france #cow #symbolism