theonlyD800inthehameau
Photography by theonlydeadheadinthehameau
Lens-Artists Challenge: Ancient
Posted on October 21, 2025
This towering bastion – all the more imposing for surmounting a rocky outcrop – is to be found in the mightily impressive medieval city of Chauvigny, near Poitiers in the Vienne département of France.
Cellpic Sunday: All The Angles
Posted on February 2, 2025
This is our local ‘salle polyvalente’ – in effect, the village hall. It’s where it ‘all’ (such as it is) happens: long lunches, aerobic classes, meetings, exhibitions – you name it.
It’s obviously a comparatively modern construct and utilitarian by design. Yet it was only last week that it struck me, while we were making our regular Sunday pilgrimage to the recycling point, how angular and geometric it is.
Cellpic Sunday: Incongruous Pink
Posted on January 5, 2025
The French countryside is pretty rugged, especially in the winter, and any signs of human habitation or exploitation are usually no more than utilitarian and predominantly in shades of brown or green.
Accordingly, it was a little unusual to find that this nearby farm gate was secured with a tie in two shades of pink.
Cellpic Sunday: Christmas Fayre
Posted on December 29, 2024
The ‘superette’ in our local village is pretty well stocked with fresh and prepared food, the more so at this time of yea. This is the display of some of their Christmas specials from this year, including such local….er, delicacies as veal sweetbread vol-au-vents and beef tongue in sauce.
We’re French, but not that French, so we stuck to roast beef…
Cellpic Sunday: On a country walk
Posted on November 10, 2024
A walk along a country lane yesterday yielded this spectacular cloudscape.
Leading lines, anyone?
Posted on November 3, 2024
A little 30-minute constitutional last Friday morning led us down a narrow and rarely used country road with pastureland on each side.. The low autumn sun cast long shadows and the tractor tyre tracks at the entrance to this field produced enough leading lines to make anybody happy.
Cellpic Sunday: Sunset in La France Profonde
Posted on September 15, 2024
A particularly dramatic dusk one evening last week, here in the depths of the French countryside.
Cellpic Sunday: Where they belong…
Posted on July 14, 2024
I don’t usually get involved in politics on this blog, but this is important. Last Sunday, 7 July, marked the second round of the French general election and, as a French citizen, I was proud to do my democratic duty and cast my vote.
In the first round, a week earlier, the hard-right RN (Rassemblement Nationale – just a polite way of saying ‘fascists’) – polled by far the largest share of the vote and in the view of many, including most opinion polls, looked set to command the largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly, and possibly even an overall majority. Not a cheery prospect.
In the event, after the second round the RN trailed in third, behind both the left-wing and centrist blocs, thanks to some well-organised tactical voting and a clear rejection, upon mature reflection, by French voters of what the RN represents. Politics in France may be at an impasse as a consequence, with no group having a working majority, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a lot better than the alternative.
Which brings me to the somewhat idiosyncratic practicalities of casting your vote in France. There’s nothing so simple as putting a cross next to your preferred candidate on a ballot paper. Instead, after registration, you pick up an envelope from a table which also carries piles of slips, each bearing the names and party affiliations of the candidates standing in your constituency. You need to collect at least two of these slips and then enter a curtained booth. You then put the slip of your choice into the envelope, come out and hand it over to an official, who posts it into what’s called the urne – a locked transparent plastic ballot box.
Before leaving the curtained booth, you put the rejected, unused slips into a waste-paper basket. That’s interesting, because voters can see which candidates have previously been rejected (although not who you or anybody else has actually voted for). To me, it was greatly encouraging to observe that there were already quite a lot of RN slips in that bin.
Exactly where they belong.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Habitat
Posted on July 2, 2024
My regular reader (sic) may recall that where we live in the depths of rural France is very much sheep country. I’d estimate that most of the local farmers have at least some sheep as part of their agricultural ‘portfolio’, so to speak, although none of them do so on what you might call an industrial scale.
Our nearest neighbour and her late husband were full-time sheep farmers, albeit only on a modest scale. Their flock used to graze in our fields, which certainly kept the undergrowth under control. Now retired, she still has a small flock of maybe ten ewes, more as a hobby than anything else.
Their new habitat is a field just across the road from our house, from where they view me, should I happen to pass by, with a mixture of curiosity and contempt, as I wrote about here.
Street scene with stray sheep
Posted on May 24, 2024
This is the road that, about a mile and a half further on, eventually gets to the hamlet that we call Tranquility Base.
The sheep isn’t supposed to be there of course, but it’s not at all uncommon around here to come across one that’s managed to escape from wherever it’s meant to be.
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