Shrieks of laughter!

Some of our neighbours are out in the road with their children having a snowball fight. We had a good dollop of snow during the night, so probably - hopefully - a snowman will appear before too long.

Is the snowman one of the few remaining male preserves? As much as I believe in female equality it's difficult to get excited about a snow-woman. To start with it's more difficult to say. I can hear the shrieks 'let's build a snowman!' 'we want a snowman!' But it doesn't sound so good when it's 'let's build a snow-woman!' 'We want a snow-woman!' Or is it just a question of what I'm used to.

Our first snow landed a few days ago. Not heavily, so children in the village school were able to play outside, their shrieks of excitement wafting across the gardens. It's a great sound. Sound is a major feature of the village's personality. And like everything else, it's seasonal. At the moment there isn't a lot, except for occasional voices and cars. But as the year rolls out, along come the tractors and the vans, the cocks and chickens start up, accompanied by the bleating of the goats. Then of course we have the hunting dogs that live higher up on the other side of village. Eventually the hunting horn rehearsals begin and the road parties. Life follows the mood of the season. Winter time everyone hibernates, spring we start to thaw out and summer we're in full throttle. In the Autumn things start to wind down a bit and then we're back full circle into winter quiet.

Even so there's a lot going on. Yesterday we went into Chinon to meet friends for a coffee. Came back home. Afternoon we went into Chinon to meet another friend for tea. Then straight after we went to the cinema to see Renoir. Met another friend there. Really interesting film which we didn't know much about, other than obviously it concerned Pierre Auguste-Renoir or so we thought. It is largely based on fact. There was far more to it of course. Visually stunning and with the tonal qualities of a Renoir painting, we were introduced to the reality of an old man's life as he fights his personal battle with extreme and painful rhumatoid arthritis. Renoir continued with difficulty to paint, surrounded by a household of women who look after him - all of whom at some time have modeled for him. Renoir by now was a widower, physically frail and largely confined to a wheelchair.  A young girl arrives to model for him, eventually becoming his muse. Then his son, Jean Renoir, who later married the muse and became a film director. But in this story Jean is a young man who having survived, returns from the terrible war in northern France, to the otherworldly life on the Renoir estate in southern France. Here everyone is oblivious of the physical cost.  The film presents a sharp contrast between Renoir's sumptuous female forms and the ugly realism of wounded human forms. Terrific film which deserves at least a second viewing.