Uploaded October 2017 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Your correspondent can perhaps be forgiven for a secret affection for pigs, having spent a summer on a Suffolk farm in his callow youth. With this delightful bit of French fluff, that affection has merely deepened.
After buying a modest farm in south-west France in the derelict district of Aveyron (La France Profonde, indeed), the author and her husband decided - rashly, as it were - to acquire a pair of pigs, ostensibly for subsequent slaughter. Needless to say, they promptly fell for them both. Christened, simply, Big Pig and Little Pig, these amiably engaging beasts (q.v. p. 22) became, if not household pets, beloved of the family in very short order, as much to the bemusement of the locals as to their indulgent owners.
This is an elegy to rural France, more Peter Mayle than P.G. Wodehouse (whose immortal pig, The Empress of Blandings, remains impossible to upstage). Replete with rueful humour, but warm affection for all things French, this would make a splendid stocking-stuffer in the appropriate season. Complete nonsense, at which the Brits excel.
thisoldhoarehouse.com
Your correspondent can perhaps be forgiven for a secret affection for pigs, having spent a summer on a Suffolk farm in his callow youth. With this delightful bit of French fluff, that affection has merely deepened.
After buying a modest farm in south-west France in the derelict district of Aveyron (La France Profonde, indeed), the author and her husband decided - rashly, as it were - to acquire a pair of pigs, ostensibly for subsequent slaughter. Needless to say, they promptly fell for them both. Christened, simply, Big Pig and Little Pig, these amiably engaging beasts (q.v. p. 22) became, if not household pets, beloved of the family in very short order, as much to the bemusement of the locals as to their indulgent owners.
This is an elegy to rural France, more Peter Mayle than P.G. Wodehouse (whose immortal pig, The Empress of Blandings, remains impossible to upstage). Replete with rueful humour, but warm affection for all things French, this would make a splendid stocking-stuffer in the appropriate season. Complete nonsense, at which the Brits excel.
thisoldhoarehouse.com
