Lost in translation

Thirsty bee eaters, tramps, hungry puppies in the forest and silent cicadas.

The cicada’s screech, last summer was deafening and now I miss them, maybe it isn’t hot enough yet. Boy they like it hot! On the shady side of the hill near home where I sit the air is full of bird warbles and trills but the cicadas are silent and bee eaters too. I’m beginning to wonder if the drought has robbed them of their summer abode. Drought is a real tyrant; we don’t see eye to eye. The bailiff has been throwing his (or her!) weight around for months. Not sure which species will be the first to walk away.

Pumped pockets of air throw themselves at my ears as I turn to face the interruption, the sound coming plundering downhill ahead of a mountain cyclist on the same footpath as me. He appears in a flash out of the woods and whizzes by without a word. His rubber tyres roar on the turn as the tread grips the stones, bulldozing them to stonier soil and dried out gorse. He speeds away as fast as he came. Vanishes into the pines leaving whispers of dust that settle fast.

Then I hear the heavy breath of a dog. Expeditious paws scuff the loose earth announcing the arrival of a friendly, youthful mutt. Its hairy fan of a tail wags in slow motion as he looks me up and down. In a meteoric turn he circumnavigates me and is gone too, looking for fun.

The vine leaves are darkening after three days of intense heat; proof that summer is here. The grapes are tiny, lime green poppers. The bees must have been at work. So the bees have enough water though maybe the bee eaters don’t. That makes sense to me. I hope my favourite birds make it back one day. I might even pray for rain. I am not the only one thinking, where have all my flowers gone!

I sit still in the shade. My breath melts. I morph into the landscape. My heart at one with the clouds. Just the songs of a feather punctuate the air. As I sit here a tiny ant walks along a dusty tree root near my foot. I can’t believe it can survive without water.

Then it tries to rain. I see dots land on grey stone around me. Delicate fine drops. I won’t hold my breath! Good job too, because the droplets fall for just a minute and evaporate, forgotten into dust. Gone. The rain has escaped us again.

Two nights of thunder in the early hours have not brought any rain either. The sky thinks it can shake its booty in the dark and we won’t know, but I hear it. It’s all in vain. It’s deep, soulful roar is just full of empty promises from above.

There are no flowers to hold back the silt if it did rain and so they are digging a trench downhill of my house to prevent a flash flood. Another storm is forecast but it won’t happen. The weather is null and void. Even so, the council say they have our back.

We are slowly getting used to the desert dust that clings to the sky. It lingers for days. At least it gives more shade but it weighs down the clouds and they no longer translate to rain. The sun battles through in a yellower glow. The other day it seemed to fall out of the sky, the finest dusting was all over the glass table but this time it fell on its own, dry, not mixed in the red rain. I’ve never seen that before.

The Japanese homeless man who lives in a shack in the woods is not who they say he is. He does have a home and he chooses to live here. He enjoys the freedom and listens to the birds for comfort no doubt. I know where he cooks his breakfast because blue woodsmoke drifts across the track in the early morning. It terrifies me he uses a flame to cook when everything is so warm and dry.

His dog is now resting after having a litter of seven. The father of the puppies was a Pyrenees Mastín, all eighty-five kilos of him. The local people got together to find homes as fast as they could, after seeing the poor guy rummaging through local rubbish bins for trashed food to feed the little hungry tummies. They are growing so fast. They say he was given the money to sterilise his dog but he spent it elsewhere. So now all these puppies have Japanese names in honour of him including Yumi, Tsuky and Oki. I don’t know the others. I thought that was a nice touch.

The tips of dried grass in my view shimmer in a beige tinted breeze. They’re the needles of sundials in the shade. They move forwards like a second hand and remind me of the time and that it’s time to leave.

‘Get back while it’s still relatively cool. So much easier to start work if you don’t start the day fried. See you next week.’

Lots of love.

Sorry for being away so long. I have missed you all. My book is finished. Finally. I am getting an initial copy done as a test run first. It took so much more work than I ever imagined and I am very happy to be back here. Happy weekend lovelies!