Photo an Hour l 13th September 2014

I've been unsure how to proceed with blogging at the moment. I have such a massive backlog of things that I wanted to blog about but after recent events it has thrown me slightly. Everything that I wanted to blog about involves him in some  way and there's a part of me that just wants to forget about everything that has anything to do with him.

But at the same time they are my memories too and even if they are painful, this blog has been used as a vessel to document my life for better or worse.

I've had this post saved in my drafts for some time. I was really excited when the Is That You Darling Photo an Hour challenge for September landed on one of the days that I was at my Dad's house in France. I dutifully took my photos and as soon as I was back I got them all lined up ready to post. Unfortunately the next day he left me and then....well....the rest is history.

But fuck it. This was my holiday - so what if during the taking of these photos I was blissfully unaware that my boyfriend already had a flat lined up for him to move into and had his furniture from Argos on standby? At the time I was blissfully unaware and I can't let hindsight ruin everything I have done.

And so. This was Saturday 13th September 2014...

9am - The view out of the window of the attic room we were staying in at Dad's house. 

10am - Jean-Louis is the farmer who lives opposite Dad. This is his tractor. The view, the view belongs to everyone.

11am - Took the dogs, Max and Shadow, for a little pootle about the roads, stopping to take photos of road signs along the way...

12pm - Relaxing was the order of the day. Dad had asked if we wanted to do a lot of activities and I declined. I needed to just chill out and take advantage of the glorious sunshine, reading my book and drinking cherry juice.

1pm - Lunchtime. Crunchy bread with ham and massive slices of cheese. Perfection.

2pm - Unending, glorious sunshine. I couldn't get enough of it.

3pm - Took a walk down the road from Dad's house to a little graveyard a couple of minutes down the road. I was particularly taken with the simplicity of this marker. What an incredibly peaceful place for your final resting place.

4pm - The nearby Sarrans Dam is currently being drained by EDF for maintenance work to take place. It's almost impossible to imagine but the water is normally up to the treeline. Mind boggling. If you take a look at page 2 of this brochure you can see what it normally looks like...

5pm - Following on from the trip to the Sarrans Dam we took Max and Shadow for a walk along the river. Max, in true Golden Retriever style loves swimming. Unfortunately he threw himself in a particularly deep part of the lake and shortly after this photo was taken I had to almost jump in to haul him out.

6pm - Chopping up green beans for dinner

7pm - Dinner, featuring the world's strongest mustard known to man.

8pm - Time to take a million pictures of the sun setting. No matter how hard I try, I'll never be able to take a picture of a sunset which is as beautiful as the real thing.

9pm - In an attempt to sample an authentic part of French life we decided to be cultural and go to a local music night in the next village along featuring some local choirs. In hindsight this turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes we've ever made. It was outrageously dull and incomprehensibly long and seriously not a single person speaks English and my French GCSE is but a distant memory. But, hey, at least I can say I did it.

10pm - Singing. Singing and singing and singing

11pm - Interval time. Note the time. 11pm. And this was the interval. We didn't get home until after midnight, and never have I been more relieved to crawl into bed.

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Next Photo an Hour is set for Saturday October 11th - people join in via Twitter or Instagram using #photoanhour.

I should warn you, this date I will be back at my Mum's so there are basically going to be a lot of photos of Fred & Lily...