Category Archives: floods

Watercolour Postcard From Saint Savinien

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A River Runs Through It

Oh – do we have eau! Saint Savinien carries the tag line – village between water and stone. Well dear me – there sure is water and luckily plenty of stone for folk to stand on. Although I have not seen a drop of rain myself, the natives assure me that it only stopped about an hour before I arrived. Not even a cloud has entered my sky but seemingly this has been one of the wettest ever winters. Last year was definitely the coldest ever. Oooh – I’m starting to sound like some old granny over the garden fence.

Relax – put your feet up. 


Nothing can hide the beauty of this place and a slight surplus of water merely adds to the quality of reflected light. It is oddly comforting for me to know that the only way to travel between the village of Taillebourg and the opposite bank of La Charente is by means of a causeway built by the Romans using hand tools, eye sight and pots of red wine. The tarmac road built by helmeted sober technoids with lasers and 4G connection to Head Office is under water and crumbled into pebbles. It  fully exonerates my Luddite follicles. 

Time to reflect.while reflecting on Time.
Which one is the real me?

The French were of course, never conquered by Les Romans. They were merely a band of heavily armed civil engineers who were allowed to stay on condition that they did some building work in exchange for the recipe for Moules Marinieres. Believe me, the Romans got a good deal.

 Oooh – last night we had the neighbours in for a sea food blow out. Today I feel like the last of the red hot mollusc mamas. If you’ve not tried harissa paste cuisine get some and get stuck in! I was gonna ask for advice on pruning my vines……but in the end I chickened out. I can’t deal with information overload. Vine pruning is a kinda genetic gift from the jolly green Gallo-God. I got up and just had a chop. Usually I do Oscar’s hair. He’s getting a bit woody but still alive. 

Baguette in the flow of life  in search of a back story

When I was a young temp in London I once worked in the art world. I actually helped to organise a surrealist exhibition. It was a difficult job because the gallery owner thought he was a fish and only communicated in speech bubbles. I made up the last sentence because I’ve allowed a couple of glasses of Chablis to pass my lips. The memory entered my sozzled brain as I snapped a passing baguette. You know in any narrative there is the problem of back story….


Emma Thinx: Stop wine on empty stomachs. Prohibit stomachs.
















Floatin’ My Boat

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Fountain Rescue team

Now – England I love you. When you played France in the Euro footie I cheered you on against the vile foreigners who had raped our soil in 1066. When you rain day after day my summer away I love your verdant meadows, your joyful car floating monsoons. BUT – please can I go home now? Barbecue and sun lounger prices drown and you know that some CEO will face the axe because he misjudged the sun cream uptake profile. 

Emergency barbecue supplies must get through

But – do I complain? Well, actually yes – I bloody well do! I damn near floated my bus today and if it had got much worse I would have had them all singing “For those in Peril on the Sea”. Mind you it’s a great hymn. I often reflect on my own past and my innocent days in school assemblies singing with joy about pilgrims and swallowing the grim pills of sin. I do not believe a word of it now, but the songs sing themselves on in my atheist, hedonist wine drinking, soft kissing, longing soul. I’m a spiritual philosophical mess spilled out like a pack of pristine playing cards onto a cow cud pasture of sweet ripe dung. And to make it worse….I’ve been a very naughty girl…..


The guys at Digital Book Today offered me the chance of a feature interview. For an hour I lay in a bath of ego while probing questions all about ME massaged my back. I felt so relaxed, I told the truth. They asked me what I wanted to stress in my work and I explained that mainly it was the sexual expression of emotional love. Yes – I can’t believe I said that. Well, it’s too late now…. Probably no one will read it.

I’m a bit of a slow reader. A few days ago I finished Bert Carson’s book “Maddog and Miss Kitty”. Now, Bert is a guy and I think this is the first time he’s fought his way up the petticoat peninsula with a love story. I’ve posted a review on Amazon  but let me say here that this is a first class love story. It is not my own brand of bodice busting and lusting. It is a story of real life and its drifting misty sadness that eats our time. It is the triumph of love set against the tristesse of unexplored passion. It is not a Romance but the poignancy of its denial. I cried….and I know your heart will too. Enjoy your tears.  Here is my review:  

I first came across Bert Carson when I read “Fourth and Forever”. I like the clarity of his writing which relies on the characters and their context to create the narrative power. The last thing I want to do is is to provide a plot spoiler so I’m not going to give many details. Essentially it is love story, more in the sense of the constraints placed upon love. It is also a story of lives searching for love and acceptance. An agonizing poignancy is provided by the sense of missed opportunity and young lives denied their chance both by society and war. Once again Bert Carson opens up the subject of the psychology of stress and focuses on the joy and problems of relationships formed in extremis. Warriors returning from war can never find those bonds which fixed them to comrades yet at the same time alienated them from the rest of society and even close family. At the same time conflicting tides within society itself deepened the isolation of the Vietnam Veteran. Against all odds, the main male character Maddog finds a personal pathway back to success, helping many others on the way. Equally, Miss Kitty fights her own path until eventually after many setbacks, destiny provides justice. It is a story of a blighted love but the triumph of the human heart. The book also carries four bonus track short stories which should not be viewed as any kind of filler. They are all pertinent to the theme of the book. My favourite was “The Medic”. I am an admirer of Bert Carson’s style. His books are easy to read and the story flows like a good screenplay. I am hoping that one day someone will spot the opportunity.

Maddog and Miss Kitty – For Amazon USA click here, for Amazon UK click here


Emma thinx: Why lie when the truth is such delicious sin?