Goats

The year before last I attended a wedding at a French château, specifically Château de la Malmaison. Not, that is, the similarly-named and rather more famous Château de Malmaison, but this one in Champagne, between Épernay and Reims. An early 19th-Century house, it was built on the site of an older, fortified dwelling, of which there remained only the dried-out moat that had once surrounded it. In the moat, one might find a goat.

The house’s owners keep a small herd of goats which help maintain the grounds. Enticed by the appetising foliage in the fenced-off garden within the moat, the goats often approached the fence as if sizing it up in the hope of finding a weak spot to break through. I took the pictures with my Nikon FM3a on Kodax Tri-X 400 film. The five rolls of film I used over that long weekend were the last ones I sent off to be developed by the excellent Peak Imaging in Sheffield before their closure.