 |
||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
Welcome to our Blog page for 2009. Periodically we will be featuring our thoughts on our new life in France And sharing with you some of the amusing and/or interesting, to us anyway, events that fill our lives. For the previous year, visit the Blog 2008 page.
Ah well c’est la vie as they don’t say in First of all may I join the chorus of folk reminding you that the clocks went back one hour in the wee small hours of Sunday morning, here in France too, so it was, potentially, an extra hour in bed although my experience is that generally you stay up an hour longer!!! I always feel sorry for those working night shifts when the clocks go back, an extra hours work whether you like it or not!!!
Following on from last week’s saga of re-registering the car, we finally achieved it on Monday but it took four hours as detailed in our previous blog! Surprise all round when on Friday the Carte Grise arrived in the post! A four day turn round!! Can you imagine the DVLA being so prompt? Wednesday was a rather chilly damp day so I spent most of the day recording radio shows for GatewayFM (based in Basildon,
I was TomTom, an Egyptian guide, whilst Patricia was Dusty Chambers, a fading Garboesque film actress! Other characters were Princess T’Hooters Calm’Em, an Egyptian princess, Sir Cophagus, a typical English aristocrat, Lara Cleft – need I say more?. Also on the cast list were Mustafa Ghanda, ‘the epitomy of Egyptian officialdom’, Shim-Me Atja, a bellydancer and Robin Graves, a Ramboesque character. The assortment of costumes was truly wondrous as can be seen from some of the photos accompanying this text!! Our host led us through the developing drama which saw the introduction of various pieces of evidence as well as carefully scripted question and answer sessions. The asides, which included many puns, were hilarious and to say that the procedings were an uproarious feast of fun and superb food is to fail to do justice to the event. And No! it was not alcohol fuelled as there were three attendees who do not drink and two more who were driving! It was huge fun and I have not laughed so much in ages! We came away as darkness gathered with sides and jaws aching! Then Friday was log delivery day – 2 cubic metres or two cordes of lovely aged oak in 500mm lengths – believe me that is a lot of wood especially if you have to stack it!!! I am about two thirds through the first corde! A corde is a measure of wood for burning, firewood and a ‘corde’ is made up of a certain number of ‘stères’! In the A ‘rick’, for example, is a third of a ‘corde’ whilst some people refer to a “pickup cord,” which can measure anywhere from a half cord to a quarter of a cord, depending on the size of the pickup and how the wood is loaded! However, here in It seems that in much of According to Wikipedia, there can be further variations with a Paris corde being 3.8 ‘stères’, a ‘corde’ of large wood being 4.4 ‘stères’ a port ‘corde’ being 4.8 ‘stères’! I hope you are still awake! I will be asking questions later!!!! However, here in the Haute Vienne as well as much of Western France all the way up into All I know is that a ‘corde’ is a lot of wood and takes a good few hours to stack! However, great enjoyment is to be gained from burning it in the ‘poêle a bois’, the wood burning stove!
19.10.09 Talk about a sudden change in the weather! Last Thursday, we woke up to a hard frost and an outside temperature of minus 2.7C!!! Although the day continued very sunny with not a cloud in the sky, there was a strong Northerly wind so it felt bitterly cold all day. Friday started even colder at minus 3.7C but at least the wind was not so piercing. Still clear blue skies so another cold night in the offing. The week-end continued in much the same vein although Sunday the sun was really warm, if you could get out of the wind! Today, Monday, we have an outside temperature recorded of 22.3C!!! It does not feel that warm and in the room where I am typing this it is a mere 14,3C!!! Thank goodness for the log-burner!!! Thursday was a big day for us as we took our car to a Contrôle Technique Centre for a Contrôle Technique inspection which is the final step before re-registering the car in The inspection covers 116 points ranging from emissions through tyres, lights etc. and took one and a half hours and cost EUR65.00. Makes an MoT seem cheap!! Fortunately, the car passed and so on Friday we went down to
Milling around setting up camp were hundreds of farmers and their families establishing farmyards in public gardens with sheep in pens and even leading cattle through the streets. On one corner, they had set up huge barbeques which, we assume, were to provide lunch for the demonstrators. Never protest on an empty stomach!! (We subsequently learned that at 13.00 the protests were put on hold whilst they enjoyed choucrout paysanne!!!) In addition to the Préfecture, many local businesses were closed so we could not even get a cup of coffee! Nothing for it but to head back to the car and home. As we were coming away, so many hundreds more protesters were converging upon the City centre, all looking well up for a party!!! According to La Populaire, a major French newspaper, over 1200 people took part. Protest French style at first hand!!!
Things did not get off to a really great start as I discovered that I had omitted to pick up my loose change and so we had no money to put in the Parking Payant machine! Nearby was the central Post Office so I thought I would pay them a visit to buy a stamp and get some change. On arriving I joined a queue of about 10 or 12 and some 20 minutes later emerged with the requisite change (I later discovered there was a change machine in the Post Office! What is it they say about sod’s law?) Having purchased two hours parking which was actually four hours as parking was free between 12.00 and 14.00 – lunch time! Come on, concentrate! – we headed off to the prefecture only to discover it was rammed! There were people everywhere milling around waiting to be served. A ticket system operates so, a bit like the cold meat counter at Tesco, you get a ticket and wait your turn. We had two things to achieve. First to re-register the car and obtain the French equivalent of a VRD which is imaginatively called a ‘carte grise’, a grey card!!!! Second, to get a French driving licence for Patricia. Therefore, we needed two tickets. The driving licence one was 677 and the indicators showed that they were currently dealing with 675 so not too long to wait there. Not so for the carte grise! The ticket the machine issued was 545 and the current number being dealt with was in the 450s! Looked like we were in for a marathon wait even though there were 5 desks open. Fortunately, someone who had given up had left their ticket beside the machine so we were able to jump up the queue a bit as this was 535! There was also a welcome desk where those needing carte grises were asked to pass over their documents so that they could be checked to ensure all was correct and that we had all that was required. Fortunately, they were and we did. You may want to pause here and go and make a cup of tea and visit the smallest room as we still have some way to go!!! Within about 10 minutes our number came up for the licence and we duly presented ourselves at window 3. I passed over the application form to be met with an amused and quizzical grin from the lady behind the desk. She asked where we had obtained the form and when I explained I had downloaded it from the internet, she cheerfully advised that it was wrong as it was an application for driving lessons. This despite the fact that it was entitled (in French of course) application for a ‘Permis a Conduire!’ a driving permit, exactly the same heading that appeared on the correct form which she gave us to complete!! The form we had was number 2 and we needed number 4!!!! Patricia started filling out the form whilst I handed over her passport, an EDF bill as confirmation of address/domicile and her old She explained that fortunately, there was a photocopying machine in the Post Office around the corner, yes the same one I had visited earlier! So off I went to get copying! Whilst I was there, Patricia arrived having been told that the photos she had supplied were not acceptable as her hair had to be off her forehead! And we thought that the French were supposed to have style!!! So, it was back into the Post Office photo booth for more pictures and then back to the Préfecture to get another ticket and join the queue for the licences. We were third in line for the licence and after about ten minutes we were back with the nice lady at desk 3 and breathed a big sigh of relief when she confirmed that the photos were acceptable and that we now had the correct number of copies of the requisite documents. She handed me a pink slip of paper to take to the cash desk so I could pay EUR27.00 for the licence and, when I returned, gave Patricia one of the photocopies of her UK driving licence to which she had stapled an official notice from the Préfecture confirming that a new licence was being issued. She advised that Patricia could use this for driving in As we had not come equipped with a stamped addressed envelope, we have to return to collect her new licence in about 7 days time!!! Phase one completed but it looked as if phase two was going to be sometime coming as the carte grise queue was still only in the late 400s!!!!! Nothing for it then but to go find somewhere to get a coffee and sit down which we duly did. We then had a wander around, did a bit of shopping and grabbed a sandwich before making our way back to the Préfecture where the crowd seemed to have thinned a bit and they were calling 520! Patricia sat down and made a friend for life of a lady sat next to her with a ticket in the 600s by passing her our original ticket (545). She could not stop thanking Patricia! It seemed that many of those who had collected tickets earlier in the day had given up as many of the numbers being called did not produce a corresponding person and so in a relatively short while we were instructed to go to desk 8 where we handed over our sheaf of papers – VRD, Certificate of Conformity (which was in German!), proof of identity (Passports), proof of address (EDF bill) and VAT exemption certificate. The Controle Technique was not required as the car is less than 4 years old!!!!!! After one or two questions and the lady having to refer our documents to a colleague, she handed back our ticket and invited me to visit the cash desk again to pay some money and where we would collect a temporary registration document. All this in about 5 minutes!!! So, some EUR288.50 lighter, we came away with our document which showed us the new registration number! Exciting stuff! Just across the road from the Préfecture there was small shop which cuts keys and, more importantly, made new number plates. Run by a charming husband and wife team, they have a tiny shop crammed with stuff including a whizzy gizmo that stamps out the number plates including a France indicator as well as the Departmental logo for the Limousin and region number – 87 for Haute Vienne. An added service is that the husband, having created the plates, then came out with us to where the car was parked some 200 yards away and proceeded to remove the old plates and attach the new ones – all part of the service!! And all done with a lovely smile! So, some four hours after arriving we were on our way home with our gleaming new number plates fitted and a sudden awareness that we must be ever more careful as regards speed cameras as now we have French plates we are likely to get done and boy are they strict here? Friends of ours (he is a former JP!!!) were done recently for doing 56kph in a 50kph zone. One point off his licence and a fine of EUR135. Ouch!!!! So, we have come through a major exposure to French bureaucracy relatively unscathed but there will, no doubt, be many more!!! Changing Weather and Fruit, Fruit and More Fruit Bonjour mes amis and greetings from a somewhat damp but still warm Yes, at last we have had some rain and the grass is beginning to green and grow. Thank goodness. We had already had to increase the area which the sheep can access to give them something to eat. End result is that part of the ‘garden’ is now knee deep in sheep s**t!! They do produce a lot of it!!! Should be politicians! We are still waiting for the chickens and ducks to produce eggs, should be any time now! The ducks have discovered the pond and are busily trying to drink it dry. Having seen what else they do in it you would not catch me touching a drop!!! They also keep attacking the solar powered ‘fountain’ in it which keeps the water moving and I have to wade in to put it up again! Animals who would have them! We have been busy trying to deal with the huge crops of fruit we have this year. It has been a bumper one apparently and we have picked around 70 kilos of plums, more than 120 kilos each of apples and peaches. So much so that we have had to purchase a new chest freezer to put it all in!! Additionally Patricia, my wife, has been busy making all sorts of chutneys – so far we have plum, apple, courgette, onion, peach and tomato!!! Thank goodness for a large cool dark storage area in the cave (cellar) under the house! We still have a load of grapes on our vine which will be picked soon. On the livestock front we are thinking seriously about getting some turkeys next year to fatten for Christmas - quite a demand for turkeys at Christmas from the UK expat community here and we have the space! No wonder some of our friends have christened us Tom & Barbara!!!! Back Home! 1st October 2009 We are now back in the peace and tranquillity of France after a flying visit to the UK which ended up being a week of life lived at what seemed like 110 mph! During our visit, we drove some 1400 miles, 600 of which were in the UK, but we got to see family who we had not seen for ten months or so and it was great to catch up, especially with the grandchildren. We were also able to enjoy two cracking Indian meals as well as shop for essentials like Heinz Baked Beans, English bacon & sausages, decking oil which is half the price that it is here, paint – ditto, weed killer – 60% cheaper, and various other bits and pieces. The car was groaning on the way back and even Eurotunnel had to put us in a freight wagon!!!
11th September 2009 Hallo from a parched 28th August 2009 Al Fresco in Le Dorat Photos courtesy of Jacqui Welham. This Thursday saw us in the lovely town square of Le Dorat along with about 1000 others, sat at tables in the shadow of the large and imposing church, parts of which date back more than 1100 years, enjoying great food and drink, all bought from local producers and farms who had stalls in the square which was then cooked to order on one of seven huge barbeques and griddles by the good burghers of the Town. You could also buy a lovely salad containing some unusual but delicious ingredients from an English run organic farm, buy wine from a couple of producers including a lovely sparkling rose, a wonderful variety of bread of many sorts, some of the best fruit I have tasted in a long time as well as beautiful desserts such as Tiramisu, clafouti (a local speciality), home made apple tarts and so on. Particularly popular was a local concoction which comprised red wine, water, sugar and bread and was consumed with great gusto as a combined starter and aperitif. This particular Thursday was the last of six such events that took place through July & August and it all took place in a town with little more than 2000 inhabitants! 22nd August 2009 Al Fresco dining at the St Amand Photos courtesy of Jacqui Welham Greetings from a brilliantly sunny and hot Earlier this week we recorded a temperature of 41.6C at 5 p.m.! Thank goodness for our pool. The best EUR300 we have spent. And a great hit with the grandchildren who left us today after a four week stay - peace reigns!!! Last night Patricia & I, the grandchildren and their parents, plus 6 friends went out for a meal at a local restaurant, a meal which lasted a lovely and leisurely three hours and which was taken at a table in the restaurant's garden with initially birds and later bats flying above.
7th August 2009 Chantegrelle Petting Zoo Opens!!! News of some new additions to the menagerie at La Maison du Blues Numerique. 26th July 2009 Micro light Rival to RyanAir! Hallo & greetings from a sun soaked Excitement last Monday when a friend of our sheep farmer friend landed in his field in a microlight which he had flown from For the pilot, Pete, it was the realisation of a lifetime dream, we all think he must be mad but it takes all sorts. 17th July 2009 Bastille Day & the Tour de France Today, we are recovering from a real scorcher yesterday (37.9C) which broke down into a night of storms and torrential rain leaving us with the temperature at 16.5C - talk about a change!!! Tuesday (Bastille Day) saw us in During the course of the Tour they will give out some 11 million freebies - hats, t-shirts, bottles of water, sweets etc. as they pass through the stages. A great day out with the only down side being rather wet and miserable weather. Although this did not stop us having a good time, some more so than others perhaps???? 12th July 2009 New and unexpected arrivals Another busy week here at la Maison du Blues Numerique. We have another female lamb to replace Woolly who you will recall died a few weeks ago. The grandchildren have christened her 'Jumper' - Fluffy, Woolly, Jumper - do you detect the trend? She and Benji are getting to know each other and she has calmed Benji down. He was getting rather feisty without company! A very early start on Thursday - up at 5.30 a.m. - to race up the motorway to Chateauroux - about 50 miles away - where they had a special very limited offer on decking boards. Mike, our farmer friend was getting some for his new house and had arranged with Fergal, the guy who is a whizz with an excavator, to go up in Fergal's LandRover with his big trailer. We were outside Brico Depot five minutes before it opened at 7.00 a.m. and loaded some 76 four metre decking boards plus various other timber and bits & pieces. We had a surprise visitor on Wednesday when Grapevine Blues' Mike Chase & his good lady called in. They were on their way to Coming up on the 14th is Bastille Day, a big French holiday. The Tour de France starts from Nearer to home, tomorrow sees us visiting the third day of a four day music festival at Bessines, about 10 miles away. The Bandafolies, as it is known, sees loads of bands from all over 5th July 2009 Rallye de Saint-Sornin-Leulac As the week ends we are sweltering in a very humid 36C and spending an hour at a time cooling down in the pool which itself is 30C! I spent Thursday morning cutting grass - again! That took three and a half hours and I was knackered! Still very warm but not so humid. Yesterday the annual local car rally took place so between 3 & 8 p.m. we had some 120 rally cars roaring past our gate at around 70 miles an hour. We had a load of friends over and ate al fresco watching the rally whilst the kids made good use of the pool. It is a tough life here you know!!! 28th June 2009 Another Lamb Dies! Sad news from France as we awoke Saturday morning to discover Woolly, the female lamb chosen by our grand-daughter, Lillie, dead in the sheep pen. Not really sure what happened to her, as one wag suggested, maybe she could not face the prospect of not being able to go to see Michael Jackson at the O2!!! Woolly’s death does seem to reinforce the thought that ewes that cast off lambs leaving them to be bottle-fed have some second sense that there is something wrong with them and that is why they are rejected. 20th June 2009 Shearing Time Again! What a difference a week makes! The shearing last Tuesday had to be postponed as on Monday it fell down with rain and the sheep were sodden. However, we were fortunately able to reschedule for Thursday and the excellent Jean-Luc sped through one hundred sheep in a morning. It is interesting as he is totally ambidextrous which means he does not have to move the sheep around so much as he shears. It is great to watch him at work and to admire the great skill he displays in handling often recalcitrant sheep. The language gets a bit ripe on occasions when one of the sheep decides to be uncooperative. Benji, our ram, ‘enjoyed’ a journey inside a sack in the boot of our car over to Mike’s farm so he could be sheared and Woolly, the ewe lamb who shares the meadow with him here, barely recognised him when he came back minus his woolly coat! 13th June 2009 Hot News from France!!! Hi from a sweltering France. As I type this we have the shutters shut & the windows open and the weather station out back is currently registering a temperature of 35.7C! I think a dip in the pool is called for when I have finished this blog!!! As is almost inevitable, the weather is predicted to break down with thunderstorms tonight or tomorrow. Not good news as we have to help with shearing our friend's flock of circa 120 sheep on Monday & Tuesday and the shearer will not shear if they are wet!!! Have to get them all plastic macs!!!
10th June 2009
One year on!
Today, 10th June 2009, is the first anniversary of our arrival in Is it really three months since we last blogged? It does not seem possible but checking the website it was March 7th when we last posted a blog. It is difficult to know where to start and what to write about. Certainly much has happened in the last three months. Photos will follow soon. In our last blog we introduced you to our newest addition, Poppy, our puppy. Looking back at the pictures in our blog, it is amazing to see how small she was. Now, as she approaches six months old, she is now over 14 kilos and stands 2 feet 6 inches tall and is still growing. She is very good natured and is responding to training as well as being very loving and attentive. We are still not sure how big she is going to become but she is already very strong and has quite a turn of speed. Her coat is essentially a goldish colour – her We have put a gate across our drive which is wonderful for her as she can come and go and explore the yard and garden to her heart’s content. She has her mad half hours which see her running full tilt around the courtyard or the kitchen or wherever she is at the time, then as quickly as she starts, she stops and collapses in a heap for a rest. She is very brave if cats visit – as long as she is inside the house and they are outside!! She is still very reserved as far as other dogs are concerned, except for Spud, a border collie pup that some friends have recently got. The two of them play fight for hours on end ending up filthy and exhausted. Spud is coming to visit for five or six days soon so it will be interesting to see how that goes. She sleeps out in the sheepshed where she is very happy going there readily when it is time for bed and playing until we let her out in the morning. Like all puppies she is very inquisitive and, sadly, has a knack of getting bumble bees on the ground. So far she has not been stung!
At Easter, Lillie, one of our grandchildren, was invited by Mike to choose another female lamb to keep Benji company. And so Woolly, a quite small, but fairly independent lamb who had been rejected by her mother came to join us. She quickly got Benji under her thumb and now only has to bleat for him to come running! I also caught her today using him as a scratching post and nearly knocking him over despite the fact that she is barely one third his size!!
Poppy has also discovered the electric fence!! She went into the sheep area unscathed but when she came back out she got a belt from the fence. She won’t go near it now!! She and the sheep rub noses through the fence but they seem to treat each other with a guarded respect. It is difficult, looking back, to recall what we have done since last we blogged. Here are some highlights and observations from the last three months which I have culled from various e-mails I have written. Apologies for any repetition: 18.4.09 Hope you had a good Easter and enjoyed the break, those who got one! We have had the family here and they have been working very hard - we now have the greenhouse up & finished - bar the missing sheets of polycarbonate - an area around where the pool goes has been gravelled and most of the grass has been cut - not that you would notice, it grows as you watch it! I think I should have got a combine harvester rather than a mower! Also installed three 1,000 litre 'cuves' - big plastic tanks in a metal cage. One catches the rainwater off the back roof slope and filled up in 28 hours! And it was not really raining that much!
25.4.09 Isn't it typical! A glorious working week and then, the week-end arrives and, washout. I think that both you and we had a glorious taste of Summer earlier in the week. Friday we hit 25.9C! Yet today, it has been chucking it down and is struggling to reach 9C!!! We have just lit the wood burner and Poppy the puppy is having to make that great decision, does she go out into the wet to relieve herself or does she hang on a bit longer in the hope that it will stop!!! Very busy week here at La Maison du Blues Numerique, cutting grass, making shelving units for the green house, enlarging the sheep pen, cutting more logs for next winter, clearing out a barn to create a workshop, sheep herding for our friend Mike etc. We have never been so busy!!! I thought retiring was about taking it easy! 1.5.09 Hi and greetings from Still, we went to a lovely village called Les Grands Chezeaux where, every 1st of May, the whole place becomes one big market/funfair/boot sale etc. and thousands of people attend. There is a wonderful atmosphere and ambience about these events which is a world away from events in the All in all it was a lovely day out and made the hour or so planting out leeks, cabbages & broccoli and the further hour and a half spent cutting grass that followed not so much of a chore! 8.5.09 Hallo and greetings from a France where we have been having the most glorious weather spending long days outside in the garden/field cutting huge quantities of grass, getting plants out of winter storage and seeing how many have survived, planting more veg and soaking in the wonderful peace punctuated only by the birdsong, the woodpeckers hammering away in the distance. Just about as close to paradise as possible. I even have had my shorts on!!! Shock horror. Not so today which although mild, has been overcast and a bit damp, probably because it is another public holiday here - Victory Day they call it and a great number of towns have a street named after the 8th May 1945, the day the Second World War ended in Europe - VE Day as we know it. 9.5.09 We are busy planting in our vegetable patch which is bigger than the whole of our garden at our former home in Billericay! So far we have planted potatoes, onions, leeks, garlic, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes, peas, mange tout, asparagus, raspberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, strawberries, rhubarb - I am sure I have missed some!! We have also got all the plants out of winter storage and have spent the last few days tidying them up, ditching those that did not survive etc. We take Poppy for walks most days, she is growing fast, now weighs in at 11kg! She is full of energy and great fun. We have put a gate across the drive so that she now has the run of the yard area which she loves. The weather has been good recently so we leave the front door open so she can come and go as she pleases. We also have a second sheep - christened Woolly by one of our grandchildren when she visited at Easter. In fact she chose her from our friend's new lambs, she was a bottle-fed and so quite small but is putting on weight nicely now. She is company for Benji who has calmed down since she arrived. He was getting quite a handful, trying to butt me and getting kicked for his pains!!!
It is really glorious here at present with the wild flowers in profusion everywhere including our meadow! Most days all we can hear is endless birdsong from so many different birds - I am sat here at the computer at 19.20 with the windows wide open and all I can hear is a chaffinch in the tree outside and various other birds, including a cuckoo, in the background. Our busyness combined with the fact that by the time we stop we are tired out and just flop has meant that we have started a blog a number of times but never get to finish! Must make a big effort. My son Gavin & his fiancée Claire have just returned from two weeks holiday in 22.5.09 Life as a retired person living the rural idyll in 31.5 Hope you are enjoying what I understand is some great weather, lots of bbqs and sunburnt flesh! The weather is great here although it is quite windy which is making it feel a bit chilly at times. However, the pool is inflated and full of water, still a bit fresh for getting into but I have a feeling that the next day or so………! One of our cherry trees is covered in ripe cherries which are delicious - must get to them before the birds! We have been busy planting yet more veg this week and should have loads later in the year. One of my neighbours told me that he has not bought any vegetables for 20 years, grows all his own and has them throughout the year. Mind you, his garden is big and his veg patch a field! Tomorrow (Monday) is a Bank Holiday here (the 4th since the first of May!!) so we are having friends round to celebrate both my birthday (2nd of June) and our sheep farmer friends Mike's (4th June). Eating will be al fresco I think on the terrasse out back which is just brilliant in this weather! It’s a tough life you know!!! And so life goes on. We have put up the swimming pool and I have had a couple of dips even though it is a bit fresh! The grass keeps on growing so we have to keep cutting it – with our John Deere mower and Italian angry bee strimmer, Patricia & I can cut just about everything we need to in four to five hours. We have even managed to get into the orchard and cut the grass and bracken in there. It is a great way of getting exercise and a tan! At present we are looking after some friends’ dog, a border collie pup called Spud. He and Poppy get on very well although they are exhausting with their almost constant play fighting which also involves loads of rolling in the dust and getting filthy! It is as bad as having two young children!
Cranes, Cranes, lambs & puppies – 7th March 2009 It’s been a while since we last blogged and the intervening period has been one where the weather has been to the fore. In the We have had some very cold weather but not as bad as the minus 10C we had in January. We have had some rain, at times very heavy indeed, but overall not a lot. We have had some absolutely glorious weather too. Indeed, as I write this it is another crisp clear morning with a crystal blue sky, not a cloud to be seen, promising another day when it is good to be alive and outside. On Friday 30th January the weather was so good that we actually sat outside and had our lunch in the sunshine! The temperature hit 17C that day! Not bad for the end of January! Then on February 28th we recorded 21.6C at 4 p.m. after an absolutely glorious day. However, we have also had some wind! No dear, not that sort of wind! Well we have but we won’t dwell on it! The wind does blow here and we quite often have winds much stronger than we were used to in the It started blowing up during the afternoon and got steadily stronger through the evening. I lay in bed through the night listening to the wind and wondering whether we were suffering damage, fearful that the chimney would come crashing through the roof or similar. As it transpired, the next morning everywhere was strewn with twigs and branches from trees and I spent some time rescuing flowerpots, watering cans, bowls and dustbin lids from whence they had been blown, the lid to the cinder bin was out in the road!!! We were fortunate as our next door neighbours who had a new roof no more than six months ago had some tiles along one edge of the roof lifted whilst a barn just a 100 yards away which had also recently been re-roofed also suffered some damage. Various of our friends lost their telephone lines whilst some friends some 7 or 8 miles away had a lot of tiles blown off their barn roofs. The power of nature is very frightening at times. It was only 21 years ago that a huge storm here in Listening to the radio, it appears that there was widespread damage on a far greater scale in neighbouring areas with even one report of 80% of the trees in a forest in the It would seem that our new roof was well put together, thank goodness! Particularly as the curse of the Smyths has struck again! Yes, we have been faced with the third company going bust on us. First it was ChannelMoving.com who you will recall ceased trading half way through our move out here causing us a plant crisis. Then SpeedFerries with whom we regularly crossed the Channel ceased trading just after we had bought five return crossings in advance. Fortunately we had purchased them on a credit card and have got the money back. We did, however, lose two previously booked return crossings. Now the company who undertook all the works on our house, My Limousin, has gone into liquidation, apparently leaving a lot of unpaid bills and employees as well as a lot of unfinished work. We feel rather fortunate in that we have only a little work outstanding, the majority of which we should be able to do ourselves without too much difficulty. We have spent some time recently at Mike’s, our sheep farmer friend. His flock has been lambing throughout the last six weeks or so and it is important that regular checks of the fields are made for lambs or ewes in trouble plus bottle feeding four times a day those lambs who have either lost or have been rejected by their mothers. Of course this has to be done whatever the weather and so we have been out in wind, driving rain, snow, high winds and sunshine and everything in between. We are the lucky ones. Mike &, more particularly, Mel, have to do that every day and four times a day! Including one trip in the dark at around 10.00 p.m. There have been up to six bottle-feds, one of whom we have christened Smudger. He is a young male and has black ‘paws’ and some lovely black patches on his face & head which are covered by a different sort of wool to his body. He is a very assertive lamb and up to all sorts of mischief. Bottle-feeding the healthy lambs is quite an experience as they would, I am sure, swallow the bottle if they could! There is one lamb who was one of a pair of twins born to the thirteenth ewe to give birth who is having a real struggle. Her mother shunned her almost from the word go and it is plain that she is not a strong lamb. This is exacerbated by the fact that she has problems with her front legs, one of which she can hardly stand on and the other of which is very weak. She is a very hesitant feeder and as a result is not much bigger now than when she was born whilst others born at the same time are at least 50% bigger. At present attempts are being made to help her legs strengthen and straighten by putting them in full-length splints made of pipe insulation, a novel use for this material but, we hope, maybe giving her a better chance. We are not too hopeful that she will make it but at least she is being are given all the help we can. And, as if this were not enough, Mike is building a new house as he has had to sell the farm house. He is doing the bulk of the work himself and it is fascinating to watch the structure rising out of the ground. At various stages very large trucks appear to deliver material and we were fortunate to be there when two four axle ready-mix trucks delivered 10 cubic metres of concrete – that is a lot believe me! - for the ground floor slab. One of the trucks had come from Almost as fascinating, for anoraks like me anyway, was the pump cleaning operation which saw, inter alia, a ball which was a little bit bigger than the pipe being sucked through the pipe from the nozzle end back to the delivery chute on the back of the truck, a very clever way of cleaning all residue out of the pipework. Also fairly spectacular was the delivery of the timber roof trusses which, as will be imagined, are fairly large structures. It was amazing to see these, in bunches of up to seven trusses at a time, soaring up over the house walls on the lorry mounted crane and being lowered into place inside the house, angled across the floor, the only way they would fit, seemingly precariously propped by Acrows and timbers. These lorry mounted cranes are brilliant pieces of kit, so incredibly versatile and highly manoeuvrable, their operators very skilled and able to place their load of material so precisely. When the operation was completed there were some anxious moments as the truck, now with no load over the back wheels, struggled to get a grip in the mud that is, at present, the front garden and drive of the house. However, after some digging away of ruts and dropping some hardcore into the wheel tracks the lorry finally managed to slither its way out and away. Talking of cranes – really cheesy radio style link here – a couple of days ago I was outside when I became aware of a lot of honking which was steadily getting louder. I looked up and there, flying in several huge V formations were several hundred cranes – the birds – or grue as they are known in French. Useless piece of information coming up: the word pedigree comes from the Old French ‘pie de grue’, foot of crane, as the diagram used to show pedigree has a fairly close resemblance to the branches coming out of a crane's foot. These birds broke formation and for a while milled about, I think above the etangs (large ponds) that are just down the road from us, and then headed off eastwards all the while accompanied by a cacophony of honking. Later in the day I saw another flight, somewhat smaller, and a mile or so off, heading in the same direction. I think, having done some research on the web, that they were Common Cranes, some 140,000 to 200,000 of which winter in the South of France and On the animal front we have a new arrival ourselves. We have a puppy! Long story short (much to your relief) we met some folk who run an organic farm and sell trees at Les Herrolles, a huge monthly market that takes over a whole village about half an hour from here, and asked them to come and give us some advice about our fruit trees. Transpires they have lots of unusual animals as well as We went to visit them and immediately fell for one of the females who settled happily on Patricia’s lap! And so 24 hours later, having built her a pen in the sheep shed and bought all sorts of ‘stuff’ for her, we went to collect her and bring her to her new home. For a day or so we could not decide upon a name but then the ever shortening short list was thrown away and she became known as Poppy. She has settled in very well and is already using newspaper as a toilet – oh the joy of having tiled floors - about 99% of the time and now performs after meals when we take her outside. She is also responding to early training well and keeps us endlessly amused, especially when she has a mad half hour racing round and round in circles – particularly crazy on tiled floors, crashing into things etc. She loves sitting on our laps which is OK at the moment but will have to stop when she gets a bit bigger. As a final aside, there is a great opportunity for making a serious oops on the language front when using the French for a puppy. A puppy is a chiot pronounced ‘sheo’. However, we Brits tend to forget that the ‘T’ is silent and, as a result, instead of using the word for puppy, use a word which is not at all delicate and in its politest form means crap! We know of at least one person who got into a bit of a mess as a result of this. 28th January 2009 Lambs and power cuts! As I type this we are nearly four hours into a power cut. We have ascertained that it is a power cut and not just the cut out switches in the huge power board that we have having tripped. The whole hamlet is in darkness although it is a little galling that we can see a street light shining across the valley to the back of the house as well as some lights in a village away to the east of us! So we are sat here with candles burning, torches giving us sufficient light to play cards – bored with that! – read books – finished mine, Richard Hammond’s excellent book, ‘On The Edge’ a very emotional and touching read – and the wood burner keeping us warm, the sole source of heat in the house! When the power went off, inevitably, the computers were on so have had to unplug them to avoid an overload when the power comes back. Cannot remember what else was on so may have to make a sortie when the power is back to switch things off!! The most irritating thing is that the heaters in our bedroom and the living room lose their programming if the power goes off and each one takes about 10 minutes to reprogramme as you have to set the programme individually for each day – a b++ody nuisance! Today was spent cutting logs. When we purchased the property, there was lot of timber about the place and I have just about finished cutting the dry wood. There is still quite a lot of wood that is outside and I will have to make a start on this next and move it into one of the barns so it can start to dry out so we will be able to use it next winter. Thanks to the Bosch chain saw which I bought before we moved out here I have cut at least a stere of wood – for those of you not in the know, a stere is a cubic metre, the same word in both English and French although the spellchecker does not know the word. Normally, when you buy logs from the local farmer, you buy a corde – three cubic metres, unless, we are told, you are in the Creuse region of the Everywhere you go in this glorious countryside, you will see stacks of ready cut timber in clearings or at the side of woods. Usually it is covered with huge tarpaulins or sheets or sometimes stored in open sided barns. It is a rare day that you do not hear a chain saw in action somewhere in the locality and the aroma of burning wood is one of the predominant smells when you are outside. Lovely! For me, having the log burner is still a novelty and a wonder. I recall so many long week-ends spent in isolated, secluded cottages in the depths of Devon, I can sit and watch the flames and embers for ages, it is so restful and calming! The flames are constantly changing, flickering and dancing, and occasionally a log will spit a shower of sparks that look like fireflies swooping around the stove. There is a saying here in The lambing season is starting and as you drive around so there are more and more lambs appearing in the fields. Our sheep farmer friend, Mike, is busy building his own house and trying to manage his ewes lambing so we often visit and walk the very large field where his sheep roam to check for new arrivals. Our first experience saw us confronted by a mother who had just given birth to twins but the were very premature. She was rather anxious about it but really did not seem to know what to do. One lamb was tiny, you could have fitted it into your two hands, and was lying still on the ground still encased in the placenta. The other lamb was about three times bigger but still very small and lying on the ground barely breathing and not really making any effort to get up. Whilst I went off to fetch Mike, Patricia rubbed the lamb’s side to try to stimulate its heart and breathing, just as we had seen just the night before on BBC2’s excellent Victorian Farm programme! It was slightly disconcerting when Mike arrived as he picked the lamb up by its rear legs and swung it about before putting it back on the ground and poking grass stalks up its nostrils and ears and pinching its ears! He then gave the lamb to Patricia to carry back to the house to put it in the oven, not to roast it – it was skin and bone – but rather to try to warm it up and stimulate it. I think Patricia found it slightly odd carrying this lamb by its back legs with its head hanging down. It did not feel right but Mike reassured her that it would encourage the fluid in the lamb’s lungs to drain away. Premature lambs usually have lungs full of fluid, they are born with it!!! It was most interesting as we made our way back to the farm house as Taffy, Mike’s wonderful young sheepdog, came out to greet us and took to licking the lamb vigorously, something which it’s mother would do in normal circumstances. Sadly the lamb did not revive and Mike had to resign himself to the loss of another lamb. As onlookers it is sad, for Mike it is money as well as lambs that go off to the abattoir earn him cash. Our second visit a few days later involved not only walking the field with Mel, Max (her collie) and Taffy, but also gathering the sheep into a pen in a barn at one end of the field so that Mike could check on any lambs being born before turning in for the night without having to roam the huge field. All went well except for one ewe that had also had twins. Neither of her lambs were particularly keen to go for what was quite a long walk and they took it in turns to come over to us a bleat! The ewe was not at all happy that we were close to her, particularly as I had a very excitable Taffy on a lead. She faced us very determinedly and kept stamping her front foot as a warning. Mike hove into sight and not being able to persuade them to head off to the barn simply picked up the two lambs, this time by the front legs, and headed off with the ewe milling around, bleating and acting more like a mother hen than a sheep! Mike explained the mode of carrying the lambs as necessary because the ewe could not see above head height – I told you sheep were weird! – and so it was necessary to let them dangle to ensure she would follow. Eventually all were gathered in and the gate was shut. The air was thick with the insistent bleating of the lambs, especially number 6 who could not find his mother! It transpired that his mother was following him around but, as Mike explained it, it was her first time as a mother and she was really not too sure what she was supposed to be doing. Eventually the lamb latched on and suckled and peace reigned! It is certainly a fascinating experience and we are learning a lot every day! So, there it is, another episode in our vie francaise and its ups and downs. Finally, in case you are worried, the power came back on at 01.20 a.m., some six or more hours after it went off, and I had to then get up, go around the house checking and resetting heaters etc. Just as well as the temperature at 08.30 a.m. this morning was minus 3.7C! The power cut was the talk of the village when I went to the baker to get our daily bread with no-one aware what had caused it! Thanks EDF!
2nd January 2009 CHRISTMAS & NEW YEAR - CHANTEGRELLE STYLE Happy new year to all our readers!
We had a lovely family Christmas and New Year with Patricia’s daughter, her husband and two children plus Patricia’s brother staying with us so we had a houseful. Santa Claus still managed to find Lillie & Neo (the grandchildren) and visited Christmas Eve – we have photos of his footprints to prove it! We also managed to obtain a turkey from a butcher in nearby Saint-Sulpice-les-Feuilles. It was a very differently shaped bird from those we have been accustomed to in the There seems to be quite a variety of fowl of choice for the French. Perhaps most popular is pintade – guinea fowl – whilst many others seem to go for a chapon – a capon - which I am told is a castrated cock (the castration is either physical or chemical)!!! According to our resident game & fowl expert, Farmer Mike, these are incredible meat producing machines often reaching circa 11lbs within 7 weeks of castration which usually occurs around two to four weeks after birth. They are usually marketed at around 15 to 18 weeks of age. However, Coquilles St Jacques seems to be another Christmas favourite and we have stood behind a number of people at the wonderful fish counters at the local supermarkets whilst they reel of a long list of fish/shellfish which they want to order. We had imagined that the French did not do Christmas – how wrong could we be! Christmas here seemed more like Christmas ten or twenty years ago in the Some of the house decorations in our area are fantastic with Santa and his sledge on the roof or filling the garden and hundreds if not thousands of lights. At least this has given us an excuse to put up some of our own Christmas lights which, in turn, seems to have encouraged a few of the other house owners in the hamlet to put up some lights although La Maison du Blues Numérique shines out in the darkness!!! In December, we attended two Fetes de Noel, Christmas Fairs. The first was on a Sunday in Saint-Sulpice-les-Feuilles, a small town with about 1250 inhabitants which is about 20 minutes drive from us. The event lasted all day and saw the centre of the town closed, the square filled with a fairground ride and three marquees in which there were all sorts of stalls selling Christmas gifts and goodies. Out in the streets there were various charity stalls, including one manned by the local Sapeurs-Pompiers (fire brigade), and several agricultural machinery sellers! They get everywhere! There was a lovely Christmassy feel about the event and despite the rain, it was lovely wandering around with Christmas music, familiar and not so, coming over the loudspeakers on the lamp-posts and a melange of odours wafting through the air. The second Fetes was in la Souterraine, a much larger town with a population of around 5,500, which is about 11 miles away and is one of the administrative centres of the Creuse region. It is a beautiful medieval town and the Fetes de Noel again saw the centre of the town closed off to traffic and transformed into a Christmas wonderland. We arrived, with the grandchildren, at about 4.30p.m. as darkness was falling on a bitterly cold but dry afternoon and wandered through streets filled with over two hundred different stalls ranging from sellers of knives – yes really! – cheeses, saucissons, jams, breads, cakes, a small local brewery based in the brewer’s house down in Folles which makes some great beer, clothes, carved items, in fact, just about everything you could imagine. In the street outside our bank there was an aerial runway, totally free of the Nanny state health & safety restrictions that would have surrounded a similar ride in the All the shops were open, of course, and again there were wonderful aromas wafting around us as we wandered around the town sampling local delights. There were rides around the town in small open carriages drawn by two horses, there was a climbing wall and, tucked in beside the wonderful 12th/13th century church was Père Noel’s enchanted forest with a timber hut set within a myriad of Christmas trees and a snow machine creating snow that fell on us as we queued to visit Santa. The atmosphere was truly magical and we had a wonderful time despite the bitter cold. The event put to shame the efforts of our former home town, Billericay in Essex, a town with a population eight times that of La Souterraine! Whilst we did not see any snow over the Christmas week, it was very cold but generally beautifully bright so we were able to wrap up warm and go on some walks around the local etangs and lakes. In particular we visited a wonderful ‘park’ in We also went up to see Mike & Mel and crossed their fields to check on the sheep and give the dogs some exercise. Whilst with the sheep we saw two deer in the trees about 50 yards from us. It was a lovely time and a great way to spend our first Christmas here. New Year was a fairly quiet affair. As we have already said we were in bed very soon after midnight! No fireworks into the early hours, no loud music thumping away across the road, no yobs shouting in the streets! What a pleasant change! That said, the French tend to party hard and in some of the local villages we have heard of parties that went on until breakfast! We were at a New Year’s Day lunch party attended by both English and French and one late attendee had been partying until 4.00 a.m. and his wife was at work as a nurse later the same morning! He was amazingly chipper considering the lack of sleep and feasted heartily on ice-cream and chocolate pavlova! Sadly he missed out on the whole prawns with avocado starter, the turkey, gammon, saucisses, loads of veg and bread sauce which was the main course and the sumptuous cheese board. The price he paid for a lie in!!!! We have also been entranced by the bird life around the house and garden. There are two buzzards that we see regularly in the field behind the house, one of which has a pure white chest. This one in particular spends a lot of time on the ground and appears to catch prey on foot! We have also hung some bird feeders outside the kitchen window and can watch birds feeding as we sit at the table. We have lots of blue tits and great tits which peck at the fat balls and make a mess gorging nuts from the bird feeder. There is a robin who picks up falling seeds from the drive as well as enjoying some of the seeds that fall from the feeder. A couple of days ago we spent much of the day clearing the veg patch which was covered in weeds many of which were 6 feet plus high. We now have a very large bonfire waiting to be set alight! Whilst we were working, we heard a quiet twittering and saw, in an old apple tree that is at the edge of the patch two tiny birds. We think that they were some kind of finch but we could not get a good enough view to identify them positively. THE GREAT ESCAPE – Starring Benji McQueen! We interrupt this programme to bring you a very important announcement. Lock all your doors and windows and do not venture outside until further instructions due to the escape of a dangerous wild, well fairly p***ed off, animal. Benji is at large!!! Yes, Benji made his break for freedom today (Friday 2nd January 2009) but was re-captured quickly before causing too much havoc or injuring himself. We were looking out of the living room windows watching him climbing the trees at the edge of his pen to get at the ivy and commenting that perhaps we should let him out into the field to get fresh grass. We put on our cold weather gear to go out to herd him into the field and when we go to his pen there he was, outside it, munching on the grass that is always greener the other side of the fence! A highly organised operation quickly led to his speedy recapture and within a short time he was safely tethered in the field madly munching the frosty grass as if he had not eaten for days! Closer inspection revealed that in his desperate attempts to get hold of ivy, Benji had burrowed under the wire and wriggled out. This was evidenced by the fact he had left some of his fleece on the wire! All possible tunnelling tools have now been removed and the walls of the pen have been heavily reinforced with timber hurdles etc. which we hope will keep this dangerous woolly creature penned in safely. We have also enlisted the services of KeepaSheepBangedUp Security Services who have despatched a heavily armed squad of ex-Foreign Legion soldiers to mount a 24 hour guard around the orchard thereby securing the perimeter. Benji has also been tagged and dressed in hi viz gear so they can see him. The hat etc is because it is so cold!
|
 |
 |
|
It was quite eerie in the centre of the City as there were no vehicles allowed apart from the protesters’ tractors and police vehicles and the whole area was crawling with local police, Gendarmerie Nationales and the CRS (the riot police). Every road down which we tried to drive was blocked off and so we had to park on the edge of the exclusion zone and walk to the Préfecture which, we discovered on arrival, was closed!!!!!
The farmers are also unhappy because there has been a bumper hay & grain harvest due to the weather conditions and, as a result, prices paid for their grain have dropped through the floor. Our neighbour who breeds horses told us that crops which were selling last year for 240 euros a tonne are now struggling to make 130 euros whilst grain which he was buying in for his horses last year at 140 euros a tonne he is now getting for 45 euros a tonne!
This is Ashwyn Smyth, your French agricultural correspondent, somewhere in the French countryside, returning you to the studio!
Meanwhile the ladies of the town were constantly frying more frites and cooking crepes whilst the bar did great business with beer, red wine, 
It was a wonderful evening with a glorious ambiance and so typical of the wonderful way of life we are enjoying here in 
We now have four, eight week old chicks and two, six week old chocolate Mallard ducklings and two five week old 
Now they are harvesting to grain in the field next door using a very old New Holland combine harvester that keeps on jamming!!!
a saucisson maker, Carrefour supermarkets, BouyguesTel mobile phones, Haribo sweets and many more. 
On arrival our party of 19 trooped off to a nice restaurant in the town for a special Bastille Day lunch and then a wander around the town, a drink or two in one of the bars and then
Particularly exciting if you watch from the garden fence where the cars pass within a couple of feet!
We have also doubled the size of our flock of sheep! Benji has a companion! A few weeks before Easter we picked up a very poorly lamb from Framer Mike, She had a severe problem with her forelegs and could not straighten them. As a result she shuffled around on her knees. She was one of a pair of twins and her mother basically ignored her from birth so she was bottlefed regularly along with a number of others. However, as they grew she did not and there was a real danger that she would get crushed so we agreed to bring her here to see if we could do anything for her. Sadly she died within a couple of days, hard though it is to say, it was for the best.
They are out in the meadow inside an electric fence, at times almost invisible because the grass has grown so tall! It did not take them long to learn that the electric fence was to be avoided, so much so we don’t actually switch it on now!!! 
We have built or had built several large planters which has meant we have been able to transfer many of the plants which we brought from the 
Also planted a load more vegetables in the veg patch which at 150 sq metres is bigger than our whole garden was when we lived in Billericay!
During the evening Poppy our pup lies at our feet, usually sleeping after her exhausting day, but also blowing off so you suddenly get a whiff of a smell which is none too pleasant, but now there’s 2 of them doing it, shouldn’t be allowed!
.jpg?859)
It’s a new year and our first January in 
| Site Map |