The house on the edge of the woods

Mu and I spent the morning in a cubicle at the Prefecture in Foix in  order to prove that, 17 years ago, a baby came to live here, only knows France as her home, has been in the school system since she was 3 and should therefore not deported to England because of the 52% who decided we should be a little Island state (rant over).
A civil servant rifled through the files I'd put together and processed the information into her computer.  
I've been in this cubicle several times before and am slightly bored by the mural of stilt houses at the end of a board walk in Indonesia.  I wonder, again, if the same such cubicles in Indonesia have murals of the Ariège countryside, the Chateu de Foix etc.
The civil servant peers over her glasses when a little black girl wanders into our cubicle and asks if she's with us.  Mu nudges me with her knee and I clamp up.
She pronounces the dossier complete and Mu and I celebrate with a hot chocolate and a glass of wine in the Café St Vosgien
The dust of even a small town has to be washed away on the muddy paths of the Bois de Belène.  We find new tracks, Bernie yaps like a eunuch after long gone deer and the wood spits us out by the farm.
There are places where you feel at home.