Idle ramblings...

That's it, autumn is here with mists and mysteries, the woods are wet and dark, time for talking to the Little People and discovering strange secrets…
Now, this blueberry pie fungus is new to me. We only just met yesterday, and he wouldn't say who he was.
The World Wide Web, however, is full of Wise Ones, and after inquiring in the right place, the secret was revealed to me
Would you believe it, this extraordinary baby is called Phaeolus! A pure elfic name - why am I not suprised?
And more, it can be used for die!

Now, to be serious, some real info for those interested:
Technical here.
Ethnic stuff here.
In French - with list of foreign names.

Yeah, that's a strange title for a blog post.
It may be the fall out from my time travel book with kids stranded in the 18th century, but it seems the past is coming back at me. Recently, I bought some organic cane sugar lumps that happened to taste just like the ones - not "organic" at the time - my dad used to put in my pocket before I went to school when I was five or six, in case I felt faint from not eating breakfast. I hadn't tasted anything like that since. Same thing happened again last week with a pot of organic honey from Italy - tasted just like the one a friend of my parents got from his bees in the fifties. So these things are still there somewhere, they still exist…
And then, the last couple of Saturdays, I was treated by friends to glimpses of forgotten times.
Last week, in a quaint little roadside inn, I ate the traditional Brittany pancakes with a difference - cooked over an open fire in a huge stone fireplace. It's some work. You have to keep feeding small pieces of wood into the fire to keep the heat just so. That's what grannies here grew up with.
And then today, near Pont-Aven, another friend took me out to visit farmer friends of hers who decided to forego tractors, heavy-noisy-costly mechanical equipment and bank loans to go with. Not only are they organic the whole hog, but they work the way it was done in the olden days.
I'd never seen oxen at work. Its impressive. So powerful and quiet, so calm and slow. So regular. They drag huge things like it was nothing at all, using their own weight against the charge. Here they are at rest.
The ethnic yoke is something too.

Here is where you guys get to know a bit more about
why I disappeared from this blog for over a year.

Let us backtrack to exactly a year ago. Well, give or take a day or two.
Just when the banks got in trouble and world economy was on the edge of disaster, I suddenly became a local (shooting) star and made headlines in the (very) local papers. Here is the proof - picture dated Sept. 19th, 2008:



In a way, my sudden celebrity at that particular moment was a bit of a fluke.
Our weekly, Le Trégor, runs articles about local people in "unusual" professions and had been alerted to the existence of a literary translator in the area (me). The interview had been postponed a couple of times, and, when it actually materialized, I'd landed a rather showy job and was in fact some seven weeks into what turned out to be a hairy marathon: I was translating Brisingr, third installment of Eragon's adventures in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle.
If you've seen the book, you know how big it is.
If you know anything about best sellers, you know they must come out in translation sharpish… 
So, for 24 weeks, starting before the original book was actually in print - with confidentiality agreements and all of that "top secret" stuff - I did nothing but work - read, translate, revise, revise the partial proofs. No week-ends, not much of a Xmas either… In less than six months, I crammed the kind of work that would, in normal conditions, take eight or nine months to complete - I love a good challenge.
But, as you may gather, I wasn't much available for distractions. And came out quite fed up with my computer's screen…
However, this was mammoth news around here. The village was bursting with pride, basking in the glory of Eragon. And this is how, for a brief while, I (nothing that impressive, really) became more important than the Great Economic Disaster in my little nick of the woods…
An additional touch to the irony of it all, both the book and the article came out practically for my birthday.
Must say it's the strangest birthday present I ever had…

Back to yesterday's walk and finds.
When your foot lands next to this…



… it's a "must have a closer look!"



Who are these little fellows?
I've no idea.
Never seen them before.
Never seen them again during our walk.
Two kinds, red with black lines and striped border,
black with white fluorescent border.
Are they male and female of the same species?
Different species fighting over something?
If anybody knows,
please tell!

Went sailing on Friday.



Here, we escape the wind for a quiet picnic in a cove by the beach.
On the way back, the wind had picked up and the sea was getting a bit rough.
It was fun surfing the great walls of water coming at us.



Quiet sunday.
Long walk.
And a visit to the Trégastel aquarium.