Saturday, July 29, 2006
Monday 24 July 2006
I have at last finished reading Bouvard et Pecuchet, rather suddenly as I turned over a page and found that at that point Flaubert’s manuscript had stopped. I‘m now reading The English by Jeremy Paxman, bought from the book stall at the college garden party last month. It is a good sort of book to be reading here, i.e. not in England, and I’m filling in lots of gaps in my history. While describing multiplicity of chain stores and demise of small shops he says that the kind of shop where you could buy a dozen nails no longer exists - last week I went to our local Quincaillerie and bought 100 grammes of nails; they were wrapped in a torn piece of brown paper and cost 0.85 centimes! N has finished reading Grimm’s fairy tales in German (very violent) and is now reading The Turkish Dining Table, a recipe book given me by a Turkish visitor to Ainsworth Street, which turned up in my book unpacking. He is reading it like a novel.
The weather continues hot; even the weather forecast now refers to itself as the heat wave predictions. During the heat wave in 2003 several thousand elderly people (mostly living alone) died, and the government is most anxious that it doesn’t happen again. Guidelines about drinking, closing shutters and spending time in cool places like cinemas, supermarkets or libraries are broadcast frequently on radio and TV. At the market this morning there were sundresses on sale for 5 euros each, and selling fast. I didn’t buy one, having bought a nice bright red linen one in C & A’s sale the last day I was in Saint-Denis. Alternating with a black one I bought two years ago at an Italian beach stall, it is doing very well. The other new item on sale at the market was ferrets. I didn’t buy any of those either.
Tuesday 25 July 2006
It was a long and eventful morning yesterday. Emanuel the electrician came at 8.15 and had finished everything (light in garage and two lamps out on the street behind working on a time delay switch; on for 3 minutes then off again) by 9.40. It’s difficult to believe absolutely everything is now done and that we shall only see him again if there is some problem. While this was going on N managed to cut the piece of Perspex to size with his new saw and fit it into the doorframe of the bookcase/china cabinet, with much holding of breath as he sawed and fitted and I held the Perspex in place. I have since filled it with various coffee and tea sets, odd coffee cups and ramekins. Not only will they now not collect dust, but should also be out of reach of our two-year-old visitor next month!
N then returned to scraping the remaining glue off the back hall floor, and as it was all covered with this noxious product it was out of bounds and I had to keep walking all round through the salon and dining room - or outside - to get from A to B. I was hanging the second load of washing on the line when I suddenly saw a man walking towards me over the lawn. He didn’t seem to be an intruder as he extended his hand and introduced himself as the deputy mayor of La Neuve-Lyre. I immediately wondered if I had left some local tax unpaid, but no, he said there had been complaints about us from the neighbours! We had been using the lawn mower in the evening, and lighting bonfires. I said that N had mowed the lawn after dinner last Saturday because of the immense heat during the day; he said he understood but that there were restricted hours for this kind of thing. I was surprised and said if we had known that, we would have kept to them. And were there hours for bonfires? He didn’t really know what to say to that, but seemed to think they were the same. I took him and introduced him to N, who hurriedly got to his feet from the messy back hall floor, and had more or less the same conversation as I had, adding that the last bonfire had been months ago. The complaint had come from the neighbours on the left and both of us immediately said that the noise of their dogs was sometimes unbearable, and that we were anxious for the welfare of the dogs as they sounded so miserable. I also mentioned their loud argument which had woken me up after midnight. Interestingly, the deputy mayor didn’t seem to find any of this surprising. We borrowed his list of lawn mower regulations to photocopy in the study (about two square inches of it) and while we were there N said it was good to have met him and did he know of any musicians in the vicinity as he was hoping to find someone with whom he could play chamber music. The deputy mayor mentioned several people by name, including one who worked for Radio France, and said there was a big concert in the church every November. I said that I sang; was there a chorale, and he mentioned a few other names to ask. We gave him a note of our names and details and off he went.
We spent the rest of the morning and lunch time pondering on this; N was all for going round and speaking to the neighbours, but I didn’t think that was a good idea. We agreed with the deputy mayor himself - why ring up the Mairie instead of going round amicably and introducing themselves? I hoped they hadn’t discovered we were English and had some anti-racial axe to grind. N found it strange that a country which prized Liberty as one of its ideals couldn’t even let individuals decide when was an appropriate time to mow the lawn. I felt that perhaps they had a guilty conscience about the dogs and the arguing (plus plate clattering and children playing loudly late at night), and had decided to get in first.
Thursday 27 July 2006
The heat wave is now over, at least temporarily. The sky had been so clear for so long that I had begun to feel like Elijah, looking out for a little cloud the size of a man’s hand. There were forecasts of clouds, rain and storms for yesterday and today, with « beaucoup d’eau » which N was looking forward to as the lawns are so brown, and because he had just planted various new sowings of vegetables. After several false starts the storm arrived at about 7.45 yesterday evening, very dramatic indeed - it got almost dark (it gets dark usually about 10.00 these days), there was a very high wind and the cherry tree was blown harder than I have ever seen it before. The thunder and lightning were loud and strong and the rain torrential. We put lights on, which kept flickering, so that I put the candles and matches to hand. N cheerfully said « I expect this is what it will be like in the autumn. » Our downstairs satellite television wasn’t working, so we went upstairs to watch the news, and more importantly the weather forecast, on the little TV in N’s attic; complete with electric fan as it was still so hot up there. This morning we discovered - and swept up - lots of little clumps of moss all over the garden, that had been blown off the roof in the wind. The water butt is now half full again. There was another less dramatic heavy shower this afternoon; thoughtfully after we had finished from lunch.
We have now returned all the furniture in the back hall, after I had given the floor a final vigorous clean on my hands and knees on a very hot afternoon. Most of the glue is off now except for round the edges. I put up pictures on the walls; mostly framed French and English advertising postcards - the majority featuring Bovril - which had been in store in the loft for the last seven years. Together we hung the new mirror over the chest of drawers, and it was only while on the phone (now back in its proper place) that I appreciated the detail of the frame.
Over the last few days N has painted the two largest shutters, the ones belonging to the French windows in the salon. These were standing in one of the outhouses simply because one of the hinges was broken; Monsieur P is on the hunt for a replacement, so meanwhile there has been time to paint the shutters ready for hanging. And very splendid they look too; currently all the outside paintwork is a very ancient flaky pale grey; these shutters are, and eventually everything else will be, off-white satin.
Vegetables are still arriving erratically in the kitchen; the turnips still have not been seen to, but N is busy with ideas for some kind of turnip and potato soup. Today he has made his special beetroot and tomato soup from the large beetroot crop and a lot of tomato paste; the kitchen is a lot cleaner than one might have supposed. (Once when he made this soup at Saint-Denis he took off his light-coloured trousers in order to eat it, maintaining it was an old Polish custom.) One night last week we had dinner with four different kinds of home-grown vegetables (carrots, peas, potatoes and spinach) and three kinds of fruit (the tail ends of the gooseberries, red and white currants). Today we harvested the remaining peaches; there have been about 30 in total, very sweet and juicy and warm, and about the size of greengages, but very good for a first year. I expect the tree thinks it’s going to be like this every summer. There have been some fine yellow runner beans, and other larger green ones with red markings which vanish once they’re cooked (the markings, not the beans) both from seeds bought in Italy last autumn. I used a quarter of the last cabbage in a dish with onion and bacon, but still need to use up the other three quarters, and currently waiting in the kitchen there is a bunch of small carrots and two painfully thin parsnips; these are very slow growing but that’s fine while there is so much else to eat. We have had a few more radishes and a handful of tomatoes but the lettuces are over now until the next crop is ready. The onions and shallots have been lifted and are drying in bunches on the wall like they did in Italy. The big surprise today was a fairly large marrow which N suddenly « found » and claimed he didn’t know was there. Two minuscule melons have also been spotted, about an inch long at present.
N is hoping there will be plentiful home-grown vegetables once the family visitors arrive, in about a month’s time. I have got a little further with my preparations, but not far - have ironed all the large white sheets and pillowcases and made lots of left-over bread into croutons. Before this we are to have an extra visitor though; N’s friend Odile is coming to stay next weekend on her way back to Paris complete with dog, whom I met when were invited there in January, but of whom I have dim memories as the cat was very young and active and the dog elderly and quiet.
Today Monsieur P the Artisan has finally called in to fix the leaking cistern in the downstairs shower room, (and was suitably amazed at how the room now looks, I’m pleased to say) and as planned N asked him if he could tile the verandah floor for us. This he agreed, if we get the tiles - there is a large useful-looking tile showroom on the road to Rugles - and it will be done in October, after his holiday and our visitors and when the weather is neither too hot nor too cold.
N’s other current project is trying to persuade the blacksmith down the road to come and take away a lot of old iron which is in the hayloft and two heavy old radiators in one of the outhouses. He has called and asked him several times, and now it seems that the blacksmith came when we were out. Yesterday N began to drag and throw down some of the iron on to the grass and managed to graze the back of one leg getting mixed up with it. I hope I have persuaded him to (a) wear long trousers and not shorts while doing this and (b) to let me know or help once he starts; I thought he was quite safely weeding the vegetable garden.
I have received a nice letter from the Inland Revenue, saying they will send a cheque for overpaid tax up to April 2006 to my bank account. This is as a result of correspondence since last November and my visit to Verneuil a few months ago, and means that I have finally got out of the UK tax system and into the French system. Progress!
I have at last finished reading Bouvard et Pecuchet, rather suddenly as I turned over a page and found that at that point Flaubert’s manuscript had stopped. I‘m now reading The English by Jeremy Paxman, bought from the book stall at the college garden party last month. It is a good sort of book to be reading here, i.e. not in England, and I’m filling in lots of gaps in my history. While describing multiplicity of chain stores and demise of small shops he says that the kind of shop where you could buy a dozen nails no longer exists - last week I went to our local Quincaillerie and bought 100 grammes of nails; they were wrapped in a torn piece of brown paper and cost 0.85 centimes! N has finished reading Grimm’s fairy tales in German (very violent) and is now reading The Turkish Dining Table, a recipe book given me by a Turkish visitor to Ainsworth Street, which turned up in my book unpacking. He is reading it like a novel.
The weather continues hot; even the weather forecast now refers to itself as the heat wave predictions. During the heat wave in 2003 several thousand elderly people (mostly living alone) died, and the government is most anxious that it doesn’t happen again. Guidelines about drinking, closing shutters and spending time in cool places like cinemas, supermarkets or libraries are broadcast frequently on radio and TV. At the market this morning there were sundresses on sale for 5 euros each, and selling fast. I didn’t buy one, having bought a nice bright red linen one in C & A’s sale the last day I was in Saint-Denis. Alternating with a black one I bought two years ago at an Italian beach stall, it is doing very well. The other new item on sale at the market was ferrets. I didn’t buy any of those either.
Tuesday 25 July 2006
It was a long and eventful morning yesterday. Emanuel the electrician came at 8.15 and had finished everything (light in garage and two lamps out on the street behind working on a time delay switch; on for 3 minutes then off again) by 9.40. It’s difficult to believe absolutely everything is now done and that we shall only see him again if there is some problem. While this was going on N managed to cut the piece of Perspex to size with his new saw and fit it into the doorframe of the bookcase/china cabinet, with much holding of breath as he sawed and fitted and I held the Perspex in place. I have since filled it with various coffee and tea sets, odd coffee cups and ramekins. Not only will they now not collect dust, but should also be out of reach of our two-year-old visitor next month!
N then returned to scraping the remaining glue off the back hall floor, and as it was all covered with this noxious product it was out of bounds and I had to keep walking all round through the salon and dining room - or outside - to get from A to B. I was hanging the second load of washing on the line when I suddenly saw a man walking towards me over the lawn. He didn’t seem to be an intruder as he extended his hand and introduced himself as the deputy mayor of La Neuve-Lyre. I immediately wondered if I had left some local tax unpaid, but no, he said there had been complaints about us from the neighbours! We had been using the lawn mower in the evening, and lighting bonfires. I said that N had mowed the lawn after dinner last Saturday because of the immense heat during the day; he said he understood but that there were restricted hours for this kind of thing. I was surprised and said if we had known that, we would have kept to them. And were there hours for bonfires? He didn’t really know what to say to that, but seemed to think they were the same. I took him and introduced him to N, who hurriedly got to his feet from the messy back hall floor, and had more or less the same conversation as I had, adding that the last bonfire had been months ago. The complaint had come from the neighbours on the left and both of us immediately said that the noise of their dogs was sometimes unbearable, and that we were anxious for the welfare of the dogs as they sounded so miserable. I also mentioned their loud argument which had woken me up after midnight. Interestingly, the deputy mayor didn’t seem to find any of this surprising. We borrowed his list of lawn mower regulations to photocopy in the study (about two square inches of it) and while we were there N said it was good to have met him and did he know of any musicians in the vicinity as he was hoping to find someone with whom he could play chamber music. The deputy mayor mentioned several people by name, including one who worked for Radio France, and said there was a big concert in the church every November. I said that I sang; was there a chorale, and he mentioned a few other names to ask. We gave him a note of our names and details and off he went.
We spent the rest of the morning and lunch time pondering on this; N was all for going round and speaking to the neighbours, but I didn’t think that was a good idea. We agreed with the deputy mayor himself - why ring up the Mairie instead of going round amicably and introducing themselves? I hoped they hadn’t discovered we were English and had some anti-racial axe to grind. N found it strange that a country which prized Liberty as one of its ideals couldn’t even let individuals decide when was an appropriate time to mow the lawn. I felt that perhaps they had a guilty conscience about the dogs and the arguing (plus plate clattering and children playing loudly late at night), and had decided to get in first.
Thursday 27 July 2006
The heat wave is now over, at least temporarily. The sky had been so clear for so long that I had begun to feel like Elijah, looking out for a little cloud the size of a man’s hand. There were forecasts of clouds, rain and storms for yesterday and today, with « beaucoup d’eau » which N was looking forward to as the lawns are so brown, and because he had just planted various new sowings of vegetables. After several false starts the storm arrived at about 7.45 yesterday evening, very dramatic indeed - it got almost dark (it gets dark usually about 10.00 these days), there was a very high wind and the cherry tree was blown harder than I have ever seen it before. The thunder and lightning were loud and strong and the rain torrential. We put lights on, which kept flickering, so that I put the candles and matches to hand. N cheerfully said « I expect this is what it will be like in the autumn. » Our downstairs satellite television wasn’t working, so we went upstairs to watch the news, and more importantly the weather forecast, on the little TV in N’s attic; complete with electric fan as it was still so hot up there. This morning we discovered - and swept up - lots of little clumps of moss all over the garden, that had been blown off the roof in the wind. The water butt is now half full again. There was another less dramatic heavy shower this afternoon; thoughtfully after we had finished from lunch.
We have now returned all the furniture in the back hall, after I had given the floor a final vigorous clean on my hands and knees on a very hot afternoon. Most of the glue is off now except for round the edges. I put up pictures on the walls; mostly framed French and English advertising postcards - the majority featuring Bovril - which had been in store in the loft for the last seven years. Together we hung the new mirror over the chest of drawers, and it was only while on the phone (now back in its proper place) that I appreciated the detail of the frame.
Over the last few days N has painted the two largest shutters, the ones belonging to the French windows in the salon. These were standing in one of the outhouses simply because one of the hinges was broken; Monsieur P is on the hunt for a replacement, so meanwhile there has been time to paint the shutters ready for hanging. And very splendid they look too; currently all the outside paintwork is a very ancient flaky pale grey; these shutters are, and eventually everything else will be, off-white satin.
Vegetables are still arriving erratically in the kitchen; the turnips still have not been seen to, but N is busy with ideas for some kind of turnip and potato soup. Today he has made his special beetroot and tomato soup from the large beetroot crop and a lot of tomato paste; the kitchen is a lot cleaner than one might have supposed. (Once when he made this soup at Saint-Denis he took off his light-coloured trousers in order to eat it, maintaining it was an old Polish custom.) One night last week we had dinner with four different kinds of home-grown vegetables (carrots, peas, potatoes and spinach) and three kinds of fruit (the tail ends of the gooseberries, red and white currants). Today we harvested the remaining peaches; there have been about 30 in total, very sweet and juicy and warm, and about the size of greengages, but very good for a first year. I expect the tree thinks it’s going to be like this every summer. There have been some fine yellow runner beans, and other larger green ones with red markings which vanish once they’re cooked (the markings, not the beans) both from seeds bought in Italy last autumn. I used a quarter of the last cabbage in a dish with onion and bacon, but still need to use up the other three quarters, and currently waiting in the kitchen there is a bunch of small carrots and two painfully thin parsnips; these are very slow growing but that’s fine while there is so much else to eat. We have had a few more radishes and a handful of tomatoes but the lettuces are over now until the next crop is ready. The onions and shallots have been lifted and are drying in bunches on the wall like they did in Italy. The big surprise today was a fairly large marrow which N suddenly « found » and claimed he didn’t know was there. Two minuscule melons have also been spotted, about an inch long at present.
N is hoping there will be plentiful home-grown vegetables once the family visitors arrive, in about a month’s time. I have got a little further with my preparations, but not far - have ironed all the large white sheets and pillowcases and made lots of left-over bread into croutons. Before this we are to have an extra visitor though; N’s friend Odile is coming to stay next weekend on her way back to Paris complete with dog, whom I met when were invited there in January, but of whom I have dim memories as the cat was very young and active and the dog elderly and quiet.
Today Monsieur P the Artisan has finally called in to fix the leaking cistern in the downstairs shower room, (and was suitably amazed at how the room now looks, I’m pleased to say) and as planned N asked him if he could tile the verandah floor for us. This he agreed, if we get the tiles - there is a large useful-looking tile showroom on the road to Rugles - and it will be done in October, after his holiday and our visitors and when the weather is neither too hot nor too cold.
N’s other current project is trying to persuade the blacksmith down the road to come and take away a lot of old iron which is in the hayloft and two heavy old radiators in one of the outhouses. He has called and asked him several times, and now it seems that the blacksmith came when we were out. Yesterday N began to drag and throw down some of the iron on to the grass and managed to graze the back of one leg getting mixed up with it. I hope I have persuaded him to (a) wear long trousers and not shorts while doing this and (b) to let me know or help once he starts; I thought he was quite safely weeding the vegetable garden.
I have received a nice letter from the Inland Revenue, saying they will send a cheque for overpaid tax up to April 2006 to my bank account. This is as a result of correspondence since last November and my visit to Verneuil a few months ago, and means that I have finally got out of the UK tax system and into the French system. Progress!
Monday, July 24, 2006
Sunday 16 July 2006
On Thursday morning I finally rang Monsieur A to ask about when the electrician might be coming. He had either forgotten or been extremely busy - perhaps both - and agreed when I said I presumed it now wouldn’t be before Tuesday. As often, he asked me to remind him what exactly still needed doing, so I read out the list, confusing as a lot of the things on it had been agreed between N and Emanuel. Monsieur A eventually said he would give us a call the day before, and asked if we would be about on Monday, so all we can do is hope for the best. It does make trying to plan anything rather difficult; we can never decide to go anywhere until after about 9 in the morning.
About half an hour later the phone rang and I wondered if Monsieur A had suddenly had a change of plan, but it was a message to check whether our bookshelves could be delivered next Tuesday. I of course said yes; this was good news as we thought it wouldn’t be before the end of July. We then decided to go out to Bernay, to get the « nose »; the French expression for the right-angled plastic strip to go over the step between the newly lino-ed bathroom and the hall. N also needed yet more narrow strips of wood, this time for his latest project - fitting window frames round the little outside windows on the staircase. The plan was also to call in at Lapeyre to get the sanitising product I had ordered; in all the excitement of the bookshelves I forgot to take the receipt with me; I needn’t have worried, Vincent remembered me and the plastic container had my name stuck down the side in very large letters.
We called at the Intermarché supermarket and at the garden centre as usual; N was looking for spring onion seeds and seeing about a service for the lawn mower. I wanted to get another green hanging plant for the verandah having found a nice hanging container in the potting shed which I felt should be used, but got waylaid looking at garden tables. (While having lunch at our little square table under the pine tree over the last few days we had realised that if we wanted to have lunch out there when N’s family come in August - when there will be eight of us for several days - we were going to have to make different arrangements; either a plank and trestles or an inexpensive white plastic table which could stay out in all weathers, together with an assortment of existing chairs.) The table I saw - lightweight white plastic with an extra leaf which meant it could seat eight - was part of an special offer; with the table and six armchairs there was a free « bain de soleil », a lounging bed with adjustable back and two wheels behind to move it round. When N saw the table he decided it was just the thing, and said we ought to have a long cushion for the bed - we chose green and white stripes to match the Italian parasol - once again it was the last one left in the sale, and they said they could deliver on Saturday afternoon. We were rather exhilarated by such a large impulse buy, and suddenly discovered that the garden centre was closing for lunch, and I only just had enough time to buy my hanging ivy.
This I hung from a convenient nail on the verandah rafters while N was having a siesta - he didn’t notice it until a few days later. I think it makes the verandah look more like a conservatory, and am pleased I can see it from the kitchen.
On Thursday evening we went to the first of several local events to celebrate the national holiday on 14 July. It was an evening « Foire à Tout » at Rugles; at least we had seen several advertised, but this was the only one we have got to, as it has been so hot. I have seen Rugles fairly regularly as the bus to L’Aigle goes through it, but N hadn’t been since we were viewing in September, and I enjoyed seeing the same route in the early evening instead of the morning. It was a small fair in a field with the usual mix of collectors’ items, market traders and people trying to get rid of their own junk, but almost immediately we found and bought a large rectangular gilt-framed mirror for 15 euros; we hadn’t thought where we would put it but I think we both felt that if we had seen this first we would not have bought the more expensive one we have over the fireplace! N took it back to the car straight away and we think now it might go over the chest of drawers in the back hall once it has been repapered, to replace a smaller one from Cambridge. I then saw him in deep discussion with a man trying to sell him a violin made in Germany in 1919 by a French prisoner of war; he didn’t buy it. I bought two little white candlesticks in the shape of hands, a brown pottery jug and - at N’s insistence - a chamber pot inscribed with « Vive la Mariée! » He seems to think that when we have a house full of guests some of them might like to use chamber pots in their rooms, but I am not so sure. We also spent some time talking to a man selling various sets of weights; I need some as I have balance scales with weights in pounds and ounces and need a metric set, but all of his were either too heavy (garden vegetables) or too light (medicinal) and none appropriate for the kitchen.
After viewing the main streets of Rugles and not finding anywhere suitable to have dinner, we went home and N made a potato soufflé omelette which he has been promising to do for some time, and very good it was too. We were just about to eat it when we had a call from Nigel Palmer in Saint-Denis - the film translator who had been to lunch with his wife - saying that if we had been in Paris they would have invited us to go and see the quatorze juillet fireworks with them. But, as he said, we were in « the summer palace », and they would invite us soon, and I said that they should come here to the summer palace and see us.
On the morning of Friday, the quatorze juillet itself, we started the day with a discussion about revolution and monarchy; N didn’t feel that the revolution should be celebrated, I thought that it was the republic which was being celebrated. We watched quite lot of the Champs Elysées procession on television, comparing it with the Trooping of the Colour which we had both seen while in Britain, the Soviet May Day parade and a similar (to the French) Italian national day parade we had seen on TV a few years ago. I was keen to see La Neuve-Lyre’s ceremony, having seen it advertised on poster - leaving from outside the Mairie at 11.30. It was similar to the event on May 8; and was at the same time very amusing and very moving. A small procession led by a couple of anciens combattants with banners, followed by the mayor and a group of about 30 or so inhabitants - mostly over 60 - left the Mairie and walked to the War Memorial, in the next square, opposite the Post Office. I watched from the other side of the road. There was much cheek kissing and shaking of hands as people recognised each other in the group. The mayor spoke into a microphone, thanked everybody for coming and said that we were here to commemorate the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and switched on a nearby tape recorder from which issued a very tinny fanfare. Suddenly the volunteer firemen drove up in their van - according to the poster they should have been there from the beginning - and hurriedly dismounted, adjusted their helmets and got into line (they always make me think of Camberwick Green) and marched up to the War Memorial with their banner. The mayor then gave most of his speech again, somebody laid a wreath, we had a minute silence (during which the traffic continued to rush past) and the mayor announced The Marseillaise and switched his tape recorder on again. It was a very scratchy orchestral recording, so fast and sung by such a high tenor that I wondered if it was at the right speed. I had assumed this might be for everybody to join in the singing, but they just listened. The mayor then announced that the same ceremony would now take place at La Vieille-Lyre and everybody started moving off; I went quickly round to the boulangerie, where I was interested see on a poster that the Vieille-Lyre ceremony was due to start at 12.45; it was by then already 12.50.
The rest of the day felt like a Saturday, and in the evening we watched excerpts from President Chirac’s interview, including what he had said to Zidane and what Zidane had said to him.
On Saturday afternoon the garden table, chairs and lounging bed were delivered at about 3; I had a phone call first from the driver who said hadn’t he been to our house before, and fitted up a water butt? I agreed, and when he arrived we recognised each other and I said that it was the day of the snow when he had been here. N hadn’t met him before, but as it was he who had delivered the lawn mower asked him if he could take it back to the garden centre for its service; to save us taking it both ways, to which he happily agreed. He assembled the lounging bed for us, very good with its green & white cushion matching the parasol; the terrace looks more and more like a hotel.
Once he had gone we arranged all the chairs and had a ceremonial First Tea at the table, as N said, rather Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, with just the two of us at one end. I tried all my largest tablecloths on it but none was long enough; we did find however a rather stained plastic one from Italy which just covered it and which we decided to leave clipped on for protection. I must go back to the stall at L’Aigle market where I got the excellent stain-resistant round one (in almost constant use) and see if I can get one large enough; the table is 2 metres 20 long.
Monday 17 July 2006
We decided that during the winter all the garden furniture - old and new - would have to be stored in the second outhouse. So far this has just served as a store for empty cardboard boxes, and has thus been known as The Box Office; all the moving boxes from Abels and from Traslochi plus boxes from all the appliances we have bought. We hadn’t explored it much; I just have memories of going there on dark January and February days in my coat, throwing in the boxes and getting back indoors in the warm. Over the last few days N has cleared it completely, flattening all the boxes out on the grass and sweeping it all out, evicting several dozen spiders, removing rusty nails from the walls and leaving the door and window open to dry it out. This morning we have put all the boxes in the loft over the woodshed, just in case they ever come in useful, and have spent a lot of time wondering what The Box Office was originally built for; possibly a gardener’s or groom’s quarters - there seems to be evidence of a stove in the corner, and before that a brick fireplace, and at the bottom of the original outside door a cat (or dog) hole! N has great plans for re-plastering the remaining outbuildings and making them habitable, who or what for, we are not sure. While sweeping out the scruffy ante-room in between the Potting Shed and the Orange Studio he pulled out a piece of newspaper stuffed behind a beam and found it was dated 1935.
At the back of The Box Office we found a large bright blue flower pot which had been on the terrace when we arrived; I didn’t like the colour then and don’t like it any more now so N suggested I paint it white. It has had one coat today and already looks much better. I said it might end up looking fashionably old and distressed, and he said yes, just like he does.
Just as we were going to sleep on Saturday night we heard explosions and remembered a poster we had seen for Fireworks at La Neuve-Lyre at 11.30 pm, so got up and watched them for a few minutes from the front bedroom window. A very different experience from Britain on a cold November early evening.
Over the last week the days have got steadily hotter; the sky has been cloudless for days, both on the weather map and in reality. We have now been back here 15 days, the longest we have been in one place for some time, and enjoying it. N is anxiously watering the brown lawns with the sprinkler, and taking long siestas in the early afternoons. I have been enjoying the sun - especially with the new sun bed! - but since yesterday it is too hot even for me, and I am finding it best to be indoors at the computer in the early afternoon. In between times N has finished the window frames on the little stair windows, and replaced the warped skirting board in the smaller attic. This morning he has started stripping the wallpaper in the back hall - one of the last large projects on our list! (Along with the bookshelves but they are coming tomorrow. It is difficult to imagine when I look at the majority of my books stacked under the sideboard in the grande pièce for several months, that this time next week they could be neatly accessible on shelves!) We have moved the furniture out of the back hall into the salon. I have been assisting in all these projects (which usually means hoovering up afterwards) and catching up with washing and ironing when it isn’t too hot. I have also given a final good clean and scrape to the tiles in the downstairs shower room. I feel I have neglected my turnips recently, they look at me accusingly whenever I go into the first outhouse, I look on them as a kind of penance of which I should do so many each day.
Saturday 22 July 2006
No turnips frozen at all recently, I’m afraid, although we have cooked and eaten a few. We seem to have been working almost non-stop over the last few days, and it is difficult to remember what it was like to go out anywhere that wasn’t for garden equipment, DIY or the supermarket. We have achieved an enormous amount however; the back hall is all papered, plus a little frieze round the top; the bookshelves arrived and have been assembled with all my books (and some of N’s) in them. N has begun work on the little bookcase/china cabinet in the dining room - it originally had a glass front many years ago and he is going to fit Perspex in it instead, and has already mended a shelf support. We have also repaired torn wallpaper on the top attic stairs with some we found here in a cupboard. Emanuel the electrician finally turned up on Friday, and was here all day; strange to see him in summer mode in shorts with a large bottle of water. He tidied up the fuse boxes in the boiler room and verandah, fitted electric points in the verandah and outhouses, mended a light in the verandah, and fitted a sensor to an elegant light outside the first outhouse so that when we go to fetch things from the freezer in there on winter nights the light will come on as we approach. This will be very good; as Emanuel says, winter is long. He has finally fitted one of the neon lights in the atelier, plus two electric points, so at last we can see properly in there. The other is for the garage, and Monsieur A has just confirmed that Emanuel will be coming back on Monday to finish it then. This is a great relief - it seems that every time he has been before, it is a long time before he gets back again to continue where he left off. And this should be the last time.
On Tuesday I took the bus to L’Aigle market again, with three main objectives in mind; backing paper for my picture framing, a long tablecloth for the new garden table and the re-framing of a sampler. I had seen just the shop for sampler next door to the curtain shop. There were still road works and I had to go all the way to L’Aigle station and walk back to the town (obligatory visit to the shoe warehouse on the way) so not so much time as usual. The sampler framing and the tablecloth went well; I collect the sampler in September and the cloth is plenty long enough with a pattern of cherries all over it! but the art shop was closed for annual holidays. It was very hot on Tuesday morning (30 degrees in L‘Aigle) and my basket was heavy with camembert, ham and strawberries; I felt like Little Red Riding Hood using the cloth to cover them all up. I also had long flowers from the flower market, so was not at all pleased when the bus home drove straight past me without stopping. The driver was training a learner driver and not looking in my direction at all. I phoned N who kindly came to collect me; after another half an hour waiting in the sun. Nothing is ever simple; I thought I had found a shady nice pavement café in the square so that I could see him coming - but they were only serving meals and suggested I went to the hotel bar. This I did, continually jumping up to look out of the window, but N eventually arrived and at least I had had a drink. We ended up having lunch at about 2 o’clock; N had made a wonderful salade niçoise.
While we were wall-papering on Wednesday afternoon Monsieur P called with his assistant to mend the fastening on the salon window, so that it now won’t blow open in a gale or let in draughts. He had suggested before that we might like to visit his workshop and see our louvred shutters being made - I think he wanted us to realise just why they were so expensive - and said would we like to come on Thursday at midday. This we did; only the second time we had ever been there, and once again very interesting. We saw all the side frames of the shutters and the slanting central pieces with all the notches precisely cut. I said I couldn’t imagine measuring and cutting them by hand, thinking of the 1850’s when the original ones would have been made, and Monsieur P said he had done it that way when he was an apprentice! He gave us an off-cut as a souvenir, and we wished him a good holiday, off on Saturday morning towards the Pyrenees so that he can do some cycling. We are not sure if there is a Madame P; need to know this if we are to invite him to dinner, which we are considering.
On Thursday afternoon we had a very efficient trip to Bernay - I finally got some paper to back my pictures; we called in at Lapeyre to confirm delivery of the Velux blinds for the attics and to leave a message for our Artisan to say that the downstairs loo cistern keeps leaking; we are waiting for him to get in contact. Once again Vincent recognised us, and I told Nicolas how much I was enjoying the kitchen, and he remembered the original planning of it on the computer; it’s good to be known! I wouldn’t have thought there was anything else we could possibly need at Monsieur Bricolage, but N managed to find a lot, including the large sheet of Perspex for the door of the china cabinet, lots of picture hooks for the back hall, the frieze to go round the top of the wallpaper and yet more strong liquid for getting the glue off the floor. Also, after one day’s wallpapering, we realised we could do with another wide brush and a little roller for smoothing down the joins. After a fairly modest supermarket shop, we went on to Vive le Jardin! to collect the lawn mower back from its check-up, not daring to buy any compost or anything else as there was barely room for us in the car.
We finished most of our wallpapering on Friday leaving the final most difficult bit (round the radiator and pipes) for Saturday morning. With temperatures still in the low 30’s it was quite nice to be working in a dark hall, and N took to wearing nothing but a pair of long brown shorts, and looked like something out of a war film. My previous experience of wallpapering was sketchy and I had imagined his was more, although in retrospect perhaps not! but I think we made a fairly good job of it, given the very bumpy walls in some places. We developed a fine team; he would hold the paper up to the ceiling, I would cut, then I would paste (on the dining room table) he would fold and hang, each of us would brush flat (once we had two brushes) and I would trim along the bottom and anywhere else necessary. I also found new skills I didn’t know I had, cutting paper around light switches, electric points and the phone socket. It all looks wonderfully clean and light, and the cream paper goes well with the off-white paint. We made a good start on the floor yesterday afternoon; I hoovered and N washed down with the anti-glue stuff - it is beginning to look almost normal. I shall clean all the paintwork tomorrow. Fortunately the dining room table is beginning to look almost normal again too, after several washes all the paste has finally gone.
In between times N has assembled all the bookshelves, completely soaking a shirt with sweat on one day, and today I have finally finished sorting the books on to them. The difference in the grande pièce is amazing; at last there are no more Abels boxes in there! As N says, at first we had no idea what we were going to do with this huge empty space; now it is a beautifully furnished very pleasant room. And it gets the evening sunshine. Apart from the bookshelves there is the larger of the two Italian sideboards, the matching dining table with six of the chairs (the other two are outside in the corridor) the Cambridge sofa, TV and golden trolley.
I have re-framed several pictures with the backing paper; two small ones for the downstairs shower room and some from an Italian calendar with old advertising posters. The shower room also now has a blue-grey mat with dolphins on from our « Italian collection»; N said he was pleased to see them again. Apart from the leak (see above!) it is now really, really finished, and I am still amazed at how good it looks every day when I come downstairs.
I have also begun researching bedding ready for all our August guests; have counted the spare pillows (nine) and looked out and washed four monogrammed lace trimmed Italian cotton sheets ready for the two double guest beds. They can‘t have seen the light of day for at least ten years, and looked very happy on the line in the sunshine.
The high temperatures mean that every day we have breakfast on the terrace under the green parasol, and every night sleep with the French windows in the bedroom wide open. There was one night when there was rain and thunder and a sudden smell of wet carpet so we had to close them, but the water butt was half full in the morning. The same night I was witness to a terrible shouted argument by the couple next door; when N woke up I recounted to him what I had heard to him, then promptly fell asleep. The next morning I had forgotten it but he could remember every word! Usually it is just their dogs we hear, and with that and the church bells and the traffic it is far from a peaceful country existence. Earlier in the week there was terrible noise one afternoon which turned out to be the demolition of a wall over the road next door to Marie-Antoinette; she had mentioned that there were plans to build houses there. Fortunately she seems to be away this week!
On Thursday morning I finally rang Monsieur A to ask about when the electrician might be coming. He had either forgotten or been extremely busy - perhaps both - and agreed when I said I presumed it now wouldn’t be before Tuesday. As often, he asked me to remind him what exactly still needed doing, so I read out the list, confusing as a lot of the things on it had been agreed between N and Emanuel. Monsieur A eventually said he would give us a call the day before, and asked if we would be about on Monday, so all we can do is hope for the best. It does make trying to plan anything rather difficult; we can never decide to go anywhere until after about 9 in the morning.
About half an hour later the phone rang and I wondered if Monsieur A had suddenly had a change of plan, but it was a message to check whether our bookshelves could be delivered next Tuesday. I of course said yes; this was good news as we thought it wouldn’t be before the end of July. We then decided to go out to Bernay, to get the « nose »; the French expression for the right-angled plastic strip to go over the step between the newly lino-ed bathroom and the hall. N also needed yet more narrow strips of wood, this time for his latest project - fitting window frames round the little outside windows on the staircase. The plan was also to call in at Lapeyre to get the sanitising product I had ordered; in all the excitement of the bookshelves I forgot to take the receipt with me; I needn’t have worried, Vincent remembered me and the plastic container had my name stuck down the side in very large letters.
We called at the Intermarché supermarket and at the garden centre as usual; N was looking for spring onion seeds and seeing about a service for the lawn mower. I wanted to get another green hanging plant for the verandah having found a nice hanging container in the potting shed which I felt should be used, but got waylaid looking at garden tables. (While having lunch at our little square table under the pine tree over the last few days we had realised that if we wanted to have lunch out there when N’s family come in August - when there will be eight of us for several days - we were going to have to make different arrangements; either a plank and trestles or an inexpensive white plastic table which could stay out in all weathers, together with an assortment of existing chairs.) The table I saw - lightweight white plastic with an extra leaf which meant it could seat eight - was part of an special offer; with the table and six armchairs there was a free « bain de soleil », a lounging bed with adjustable back and two wheels behind to move it round. When N saw the table he decided it was just the thing, and said we ought to have a long cushion for the bed - we chose green and white stripes to match the Italian parasol - once again it was the last one left in the sale, and they said they could deliver on Saturday afternoon. We were rather exhilarated by such a large impulse buy, and suddenly discovered that the garden centre was closing for lunch, and I only just had enough time to buy my hanging ivy.
This I hung from a convenient nail on the verandah rafters while N was having a siesta - he didn’t notice it until a few days later. I think it makes the verandah look more like a conservatory, and am pleased I can see it from the kitchen.
On Thursday evening we went to the first of several local events to celebrate the national holiday on 14 July. It was an evening « Foire à Tout » at Rugles; at least we had seen several advertised, but this was the only one we have got to, as it has been so hot. I have seen Rugles fairly regularly as the bus to L’Aigle goes through it, but N hadn’t been since we were viewing in September, and I enjoyed seeing the same route in the early evening instead of the morning. It was a small fair in a field with the usual mix of collectors’ items, market traders and people trying to get rid of their own junk, but almost immediately we found and bought a large rectangular gilt-framed mirror for 15 euros; we hadn’t thought where we would put it but I think we both felt that if we had seen this first we would not have bought the more expensive one we have over the fireplace! N took it back to the car straight away and we think now it might go over the chest of drawers in the back hall once it has been repapered, to replace a smaller one from Cambridge. I then saw him in deep discussion with a man trying to sell him a violin made in Germany in 1919 by a French prisoner of war; he didn’t buy it. I bought two little white candlesticks in the shape of hands, a brown pottery jug and - at N’s insistence - a chamber pot inscribed with « Vive la Mariée! » He seems to think that when we have a house full of guests some of them might like to use chamber pots in their rooms, but I am not so sure. We also spent some time talking to a man selling various sets of weights; I need some as I have balance scales with weights in pounds and ounces and need a metric set, but all of his were either too heavy (garden vegetables) or too light (medicinal) and none appropriate for the kitchen.
After viewing the main streets of Rugles and not finding anywhere suitable to have dinner, we went home and N made a potato soufflé omelette which he has been promising to do for some time, and very good it was too. We were just about to eat it when we had a call from Nigel Palmer in Saint-Denis - the film translator who had been to lunch with his wife - saying that if we had been in Paris they would have invited us to go and see the quatorze juillet fireworks with them. But, as he said, we were in « the summer palace », and they would invite us soon, and I said that they should come here to the summer palace and see us.
On the morning of Friday, the quatorze juillet itself, we started the day with a discussion about revolution and monarchy; N didn’t feel that the revolution should be celebrated, I thought that it was the republic which was being celebrated. We watched quite lot of the Champs Elysées procession on television, comparing it with the Trooping of the Colour which we had both seen while in Britain, the Soviet May Day parade and a similar (to the French) Italian national day parade we had seen on TV a few years ago. I was keen to see La Neuve-Lyre’s ceremony, having seen it advertised on poster - leaving from outside the Mairie at 11.30. It was similar to the event on May 8; and was at the same time very amusing and very moving. A small procession led by a couple of anciens combattants with banners, followed by the mayor and a group of about 30 or so inhabitants - mostly over 60 - left the Mairie and walked to the War Memorial, in the next square, opposite the Post Office. I watched from the other side of the road. There was much cheek kissing and shaking of hands as people recognised each other in the group. The mayor spoke into a microphone, thanked everybody for coming and said that we were here to commemorate the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and switched on a nearby tape recorder from which issued a very tinny fanfare. Suddenly the volunteer firemen drove up in their van - according to the poster they should have been there from the beginning - and hurriedly dismounted, adjusted their helmets and got into line (they always make me think of Camberwick Green) and marched up to the War Memorial with their banner. The mayor then gave most of his speech again, somebody laid a wreath, we had a minute silence (during which the traffic continued to rush past) and the mayor announced The Marseillaise and switched his tape recorder on again. It was a very scratchy orchestral recording, so fast and sung by such a high tenor that I wondered if it was at the right speed. I had assumed this might be for everybody to join in the singing, but they just listened. The mayor then announced that the same ceremony would now take place at La Vieille-Lyre and everybody started moving off; I went quickly round to the boulangerie, where I was interested see on a poster that the Vieille-Lyre ceremony was due to start at 12.45; it was by then already 12.50.
The rest of the day felt like a Saturday, and in the evening we watched excerpts from President Chirac’s interview, including what he had said to Zidane and what Zidane had said to him.
On Saturday afternoon the garden table, chairs and lounging bed were delivered at about 3; I had a phone call first from the driver who said hadn’t he been to our house before, and fitted up a water butt? I agreed, and when he arrived we recognised each other and I said that it was the day of the snow when he had been here. N hadn’t met him before, but as it was he who had delivered the lawn mower asked him if he could take it back to the garden centre for its service; to save us taking it both ways, to which he happily agreed. He assembled the lounging bed for us, very good with its green & white cushion matching the parasol; the terrace looks more and more like a hotel.
Once he had gone we arranged all the chairs and had a ceremonial First Tea at the table, as N said, rather Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, with just the two of us at one end. I tried all my largest tablecloths on it but none was long enough; we did find however a rather stained plastic one from Italy which just covered it and which we decided to leave clipped on for protection. I must go back to the stall at L’Aigle market where I got the excellent stain-resistant round one (in almost constant use) and see if I can get one large enough; the table is 2 metres 20 long.
Monday 17 July 2006
We decided that during the winter all the garden furniture - old and new - would have to be stored in the second outhouse. So far this has just served as a store for empty cardboard boxes, and has thus been known as The Box Office; all the moving boxes from Abels and from Traslochi plus boxes from all the appliances we have bought. We hadn’t explored it much; I just have memories of going there on dark January and February days in my coat, throwing in the boxes and getting back indoors in the warm. Over the last few days N has cleared it completely, flattening all the boxes out on the grass and sweeping it all out, evicting several dozen spiders, removing rusty nails from the walls and leaving the door and window open to dry it out. This morning we have put all the boxes in the loft over the woodshed, just in case they ever come in useful, and have spent a lot of time wondering what The Box Office was originally built for; possibly a gardener’s or groom’s quarters - there seems to be evidence of a stove in the corner, and before that a brick fireplace, and at the bottom of the original outside door a cat (or dog) hole! N has great plans for re-plastering the remaining outbuildings and making them habitable, who or what for, we are not sure. While sweeping out the scruffy ante-room in between the Potting Shed and the Orange Studio he pulled out a piece of newspaper stuffed behind a beam and found it was dated 1935.
At the back of The Box Office we found a large bright blue flower pot which had been on the terrace when we arrived; I didn’t like the colour then and don’t like it any more now so N suggested I paint it white. It has had one coat today and already looks much better. I said it might end up looking fashionably old and distressed, and he said yes, just like he does.
Just as we were going to sleep on Saturday night we heard explosions and remembered a poster we had seen for Fireworks at La Neuve-Lyre at 11.30 pm, so got up and watched them for a few minutes from the front bedroom window. A very different experience from Britain on a cold November early evening.
Over the last week the days have got steadily hotter; the sky has been cloudless for days, both on the weather map and in reality. We have now been back here 15 days, the longest we have been in one place for some time, and enjoying it. N is anxiously watering the brown lawns with the sprinkler, and taking long siestas in the early afternoons. I have been enjoying the sun - especially with the new sun bed! - but since yesterday it is too hot even for me, and I am finding it best to be indoors at the computer in the early afternoon. In between times N has finished the window frames on the little stair windows, and replaced the warped skirting board in the smaller attic. This morning he has started stripping the wallpaper in the back hall - one of the last large projects on our list! (Along with the bookshelves but they are coming tomorrow. It is difficult to imagine when I look at the majority of my books stacked under the sideboard in the grande pièce for several months, that this time next week they could be neatly accessible on shelves!) We have moved the furniture out of the back hall into the salon. I have been assisting in all these projects (which usually means hoovering up afterwards) and catching up with washing and ironing when it isn’t too hot. I have also given a final good clean and scrape to the tiles in the downstairs shower room. I feel I have neglected my turnips recently, they look at me accusingly whenever I go into the first outhouse, I look on them as a kind of penance of which I should do so many each day.
Saturday 22 July 2006
No turnips frozen at all recently, I’m afraid, although we have cooked and eaten a few. We seem to have been working almost non-stop over the last few days, and it is difficult to remember what it was like to go out anywhere that wasn’t for garden equipment, DIY or the supermarket. We have achieved an enormous amount however; the back hall is all papered, plus a little frieze round the top; the bookshelves arrived and have been assembled with all my books (and some of N’s) in them. N has begun work on the little bookcase/china cabinet in the dining room - it originally had a glass front many years ago and he is going to fit Perspex in it instead, and has already mended a shelf support. We have also repaired torn wallpaper on the top attic stairs with some we found here in a cupboard. Emanuel the electrician finally turned up on Friday, and was here all day; strange to see him in summer mode in shorts with a large bottle of water. He tidied up the fuse boxes in the boiler room and verandah, fitted electric points in the verandah and outhouses, mended a light in the verandah, and fitted a sensor to an elegant light outside the first outhouse so that when we go to fetch things from the freezer in there on winter nights the light will come on as we approach. This will be very good; as Emanuel says, winter is long. He has finally fitted one of the neon lights in the atelier, plus two electric points, so at last we can see properly in there. The other is for the garage, and Monsieur A has just confirmed that Emanuel will be coming back on Monday to finish it then. This is a great relief - it seems that every time he has been before, it is a long time before he gets back again to continue where he left off. And this should be the last time.
On Tuesday I took the bus to L’Aigle market again, with three main objectives in mind; backing paper for my picture framing, a long tablecloth for the new garden table and the re-framing of a sampler. I had seen just the shop for sampler next door to the curtain shop. There were still road works and I had to go all the way to L’Aigle station and walk back to the town (obligatory visit to the shoe warehouse on the way) so not so much time as usual. The sampler framing and the tablecloth went well; I collect the sampler in September and the cloth is plenty long enough with a pattern of cherries all over it! but the art shop was closed for annual holidays. It was very hot on Tuesday morning (30 degrees in L‘Aigle) and my basket was heavy with camembert, ham and strawberries; I felt like Little Red Riding Hood using the cloth to cover them all up. I also had long flowers from the flower market, so was not at all pleased when the bus home drove straight past me without stopping. The driver was training a learner driver and not looking in my direction at all. I phoned N who kindly came to collect me; after another half an hour waiting in the sun. Nothing is ever simple; I thought I had found a shady nice pavement café in the square so that I could see him coming - but they were only serving meals and suggested I went to the hotel bar. This I did, continually jumping up to look out of the window, but N eventually arrived and at least I had had a drink. We ended up having lunch at about 2 o’clock; N had made a wonderful salade niçoise.
While we were wall-papering on Wednesday afternoon Monsieur P called with his assistant to mend the fastening on the salon window, so that it now won’t blow open in a gale or let in draughts. He had suggested before that we might like to visit his workshop and see our louvred shutters being made - I think he wanted us to realise just why they were so expensive - and said would we like to come on Thursday at midday. This we did; only the second time we had ever been there, and once again very interesting. We saw all the side frames of the shutters and the slanting central pieces with all the notches precisely cut. I said I couldn’t imagine measuring and cutting them by hand, thinking of the 1850’s when the original ones would have been made, and Monsieur P said he had done it that way when he was an apprentice! He gave us an off-cut as a souvenir, and we wished him a good holiday, off on Saturday morning towards the Pyrenees so that he can do some cycling. We are not sure if there is a Madame P; need to know this if we are to invite him to dinner, which we are considering.
On Thursday afternoon we had a very efficient trip to Bernay - I finally got some paper to back my pictures; we called in at Lapeyre to confirm delivery of the Velux blinds for the attics and to leave a message for our Artisan to say that the downstairs loo cistern keeps leaking; we are waiting for him to get in contact. Once again Vincent recognised us, and I told Nicolas how much I was enjoying the kitchen, and he remembered the original planning of it on the computer; it’s good to be known! I wouldn’t have thought there was anything else we could possibly need at Monsieur Bricolage, but N managed to find a lot, including the large sheet of Perspex for the door of the china cabinet, lots of picture hooks for the back hall, the frieze to go round the top of the wallpaper and yet more strong liquid for getting the glue off the floor. Also, after one day’s wallpapering, we realised we could do with another wide brush and a little roller for smoothing down the joins. After a fairly modest supermarket shop, we went on to Vive le Jardin! to collect the lawn mower back from its check-up, not daring to buy any compost or anything else as there was barely room for us in the car.
We finished most of our wallpapering on Friday leaving the final most difficult bit (round the radiator and pipes) for Saturday morning. With temperatures still in the low 30’s it was quite nice to be working in a dark hall, and N took to wearing nothing but a pair of long brown shorts, and looked like something out of a war film. My previous experience of wallpapering was sketchy and I had imagined his was more, although in retrospect perhaps not! but I think we made a fairly good job of it, given the very bumpy walls in some places. We developed a fine team; he would hold the paper up to the ceiling, I would cut, then I would paste (on the dining room table) he would fold and hang, each of us would brush flat (once we had two brushes) and I would trim along the bottom and anywhere else necessary. I also found new skills I didn’t know I had, cutting paper around light switches, electric points and the phone socket. It all looks wonderfully clean and light, and the cream paper goes well with the off-white paint. We made a good start on the floor yesterday afternoon; I hoovered and N washed down with the anti-glue stuff - it is beginning to look almost normal. I shall clean all the paintwork tomorrow. Fortunately the dining room table is beginning to look almost normal again too, after several washes all the paste has finally gone.
In between times N has assembled all the bookshelves, completely soaking a shirt with sweat on one day, and today I have finally finished sorting the books on to them. The difference in the grande pièce is amazing; at last there are no more Abels boxes in there! As N says, at first we had no idea what we were going to do with this huge empty space; now it is a beautifully furnished very pleasant room. And it gets the evening sunshine. Apart from the bookshelves there is the larger of the two Italian sideboards, the matching dining table with six of the chairs (the other two are outside in the corridor) the Cambridge sofa, TV and golden trolley.
I have re-framed several pictures with the backing paper; two small ones for the downstairs shower room and some from an Italian calendar with old advertising posters. The shower room also now has a blue-grey mat with dolphins on from our « Italian collection»; N said he was pleased to see them again. Apart from the leak (see above!) it is now really, really finished, and I am still amazed at how good it looks every day when I come downstairs.
I have also begun researching bedding ready for all our August guests; have counted the spare pillows (nine) and looked out and washed four monogrammed lace trimmed Italian cotton sheets ready for the two double guest beds. They can‘t have seen the light of day for at least ten years, and looked very happy on the line in the sunshine.
The high temperatures mean that every day we have breakfast on the terrace under the green parasol, and every night sleep with the French windows in the bedroom wide open. There was one night when there was rain and thunder and a sudden smell of wet carpet so we had to close them, but the water butt was half full in the morning. The same night I was witness to a terrible shouted argument by the couple next door; when N woke up I recounted to him what I had heard to him, then promptly fell asleep. The next morning I had forgotten it but he could remember every word! Usually it is just their dogs we hear, and with that and the church bells and the traffic it is far from a peaceful country existence. Earlier in the week there was terrible noise one afternoon which turned out to be the demolition of a wall over the road next door to Marie-Antoinette; she had mentioned that there were plans to build houses there. Fortunately she seems to be away this week!
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Friday 7 July 2006
The temperature was still in the low thirties when we got back here on Sunday afternoon, but now it’s much fresher and a bit cloudy. Up until a few days ago the World Cup was not having much effect on our lives, apart from taking up three-quarters of the TV news each day much to N’s annoyance, but as the French team progresses it’s getting more and more difficult to ignore. During the match against Brazil on Saturday evening we were at Saint-Denis watching a programme about the Medicis on a German channel, but were kept abreast of things by the cheers and fireworks outside the window. We thought perhaps things would be calmer away from Paris, but were wrong; on Wednesday evening after the win against Portugal cars and motor bikes roared up and down the road outside with horns sounding and trumpets blowing until well after midnight. As it was still very warm and thundery we had the bedroom French windows open, and got the full benefit of the noise. I am stoically prepared for another short night’s sleep on Sunday, whatever happens.
Two of the most urgent things once we got back here were contacting Monsieur P the carpenter about the shutters and Monsieur A concerning the unfinished electrical work; to let them know that we were now back for some while, and to find out how soon they were able to come. I was quite prepared for them both to be on holiday, so was pleasantly surprised when I got a call from Monsieur P on Monday morning apologising for the long delay, and saying that he could come on Tuesday morning. Unusually, I already had two appointments for that morning; the delivery of the new freezer at 9.30 and the hairdresser at 11.00 so fitted him in at 10.00. In the event the freezer arrived at 9.15 when we were still having a very warm breakfast outside on the terrace for the first time under a green and white striped parasol from Italy, which gives a lovely holiday feel to the place, especially with the white garden furniture. The freezer fitted well into the place prepared for it in the first outhouse - N had painted the walls white the day before - and the extension lead was put into place and everything switched on.
Monsieur P arrived on time and was here almost an hour, right up to the time I left for the hairdresser. We all three went all round inspecting the shutters on the ground floor; he measured everything in great detail, and we learned a lot of new « shutter » vocabulary. While we were (carefully) standing on the pavement discussing the two grande pièce shutters which front onto the road, Marie -Antoinette came along with her bread and there was some lively banter between her and Monsieur P, during which it transpired that they had known each other a long time, he had fitted her shutters, that he was 57 and due to retire in 10 years time, and that she was about to go and get some « pick your own » strawberries, somewhere between Rugles and L‘Aigle. She said wasn’t I making any strawberry jam this year, and I tried to give the impression that of course I was, whereas in reality N has requisitioned my preserving pan to collect ash from the fire and has promised to replace it but hasn’t done so yet. All this went on while heavy lorries thundered past between us, but we were cheered by Monsieur P saying that the by-pass would definitely come, it was just a matter of when. (Last time he said they had been talking about it for 15 years) I thought perhaps there might be a day in the future when there were no more heavy lorries, and we had fine new shutters and might be able to leave them open and hold civilised conversations with neighbours across the road.
All the while this was going on the sky was getting darker and darker, and by the time Monsieur P was loading old shutters into his van (to re-use the metal joints at the bottom, whose name I have forgotten) rain began to fall in big drops and there were claps of thunder. We lent him one of N’s waterproof jackets, and N put on the other and I carried the board with all the notes and measurements, and then had to say goodbye and leave for my appointment.
He will contact us when replacement shutters have been made, will check they fit properly; N will paint them then Monsieur P will finally fit them. We are very confident this will be a job well done. After the hairdresser - entertaining as usual - I phoned Monsieur A, and said that the box full of wires (found it difficult to describe this) in the boiler room needing closing up and that there were two neon lights to be fitted in the atelier, plus other things to finish, about a day’s work in all. He gave his usual reply; it might this week or next, but he would give us a call. I met him in the Quincaillerie this morning , and he said it would be next week.
The other recurring theme this week has been the freezing of vegetables and vegetable soup, once the freezer was in position to accommodate them. On Monday it was broccoli and cauliflower, on Tuesday lettuce soup, on Wednesday spinach and on Thursday more lettuce soup. Freezing and blanching begins with the boiling of vast pans of water - I feel as though I am preparing for a home birth - and a production line of colanders, sink of iced water, drying in the salad spinner (a good tip) and bags and wire ties to finish it all off. We have also done panic buying of freezer bags and boxes, in Bernay on Tuesday and at Champion at Conches today. We have harvested more peas, beans, spring onions and potatoes and I have rather unsuccessfully made a rhubarb tart, well we were getting a little tired of crumble. Every so often N appears at the kitchen window and hands some produce through; sometimes he asks what will be needed in the kitchen that day, as though he were Head Gardener at a Big House. Which of course he is.
Apart from cleaning and painting the first outhouse, N has made great progress with some of the others. Thinking now of the possibility of using the two studio rooms for his musical party in August, he has fitted wall and ceiling lights (too long to wait for Emanuel!) and I have covered with one of our surplus bedspreads the old foam sofa which was left there. If only we can get the very large heavy table onto its feet - we are waiting until there are several very strong people here - it will look great. As I write, he is fixing a lock on the door. The room which leads into this which we call The Potting Shed and where all the gardening things are stored also had a makeover yesterday. We took two of the wall cupboards from the old kitchen, put them at either end of the front wall and laid a long piece of work surface (also from the old kitchen) over the top. We put all the empty flower pots underneath, and packets of various products and tools on the shelves of the cupboards. All much tidier looking and more efficient, and a surface on which to plant pots, as opposed to one’s hands and knees on the grass outside.
Indoors, N has now set up his electronic keyboard in his attic study. On Sunday evening he had it in organ mode, and it sounded very choral evensong as I went up the stairs. It was so hot up there that he had taken his shirt off to play, and reminded me of the clip from Monty Python where the naked organ player turns round to grin at the audience. On Tuesday afternoon we went to the Sesame store at Bernay to order a single bed for the attic, ready for August. We had last been there in the winter, to order our mattress and television, and as luck would have it, it was sale time again and we managed to order a reduced-price mattress and base which will be delivered next Tuesday afternoon. On our way out, N saw a computer desk he liked the look of - having finally decided he would have an extra computer up there - so added that to the order as well. We then went on to Lapeyre, also for the first time in ages, to see about blinds for the Velux roof windows in the two attic rooms, and to try and get the product for cleaning the broyeur loo, which we had been unable to find anywhere else. N went back with the measurements of the roof windows yesterday (he had to take his light fitting back to Monsieur Bricolage to be fixed) but we have to collect the sanitising product after Saturday. He also bought two electric fans at Monsieur Bricolage, so will no longer have to take his shirt off to play the organ, but as so often happens, it is now not nearly so hot, anyway. The principal reason for the fans is the comfort of our guests in August, however!
There was a slight accident yesterday, N came to the kitchen window and asked if I’d heard the crash; I thought it must be the rake falling onto one of the cloches again, but I was wrong. He had fitted up a swing which had come from Italy onto a low (apparently hollow) branch of the apple tree, and the whole branch had broken off, and he had fallen - not very far - onto the ground. Fortunately it hasn’t altered the shape of the apple tree too much (and not altered his shape at all), but took a lot of valuable time carting off the broken bits under the wide pine tree; at least they will make good firewood once the leaves have died off. We have also rescued the apples concerned and put them in basket in the outhouse in the hope of using them for mint jelly. When I have a spare moment.
Saturday 8 July 2006
There was a ring at the doorbell just before dinner last night; it was Monsieur P calling in with a detailed estimate of the costs of the shutters. He refused an apéritif, saying it was something he never did; we weren’t sure if he meant apéritifs or alcohol in general. He was wearing his shorts as he had cycled here, and told us how much he was cycling and how much weight he was losing. I explained that I had my bicycle here, but had only gone as far as the recycling area, and he said I could go a little further than that. I have in fact started up what I hope will be regular exercise DVDs again after a gap, and I should think all these « veg & two veg » meals must be doing me some good.
N is trying to clear parts of the vegetable garden to plant second sowings of various things; he has been surprised that some things have grown so early and so plentifully, and I am hoping next year they won’t come quite so all at the same time. We have a huge basket of very pretty purple turnips in the first outhouse; I have frozen a few in chunks and plan to freeze some purée too. Have also frozen more cauliflower florets, and despite its size, the freezer is filling up.
Sunday 9 July 2006
Last night we had Egg Florentine with some very fresh spinach, followed by vanilla ice cream with some of our own currants (red, black and white) sprinkled over the top. This morning I tried a recipe for Sorrel, Pea, Lettuce and Spring Onion Soup, which was excellent and just the ingredients we have to hand. It came from Rick Stein’s French Odyssey cook book, given to me as a leaving Cambridge present by Will at the office; it went into store before I had a chance to read it, and I have only lately consulted it, so if you are out there Will, thank you. (Thank you to Rick Stein too!) Another book proving invaluable at the moment is Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, given to me by the Capelin family some time in the late 1980’s; a mixture of dictionary, history and recipe book. This afternoon N has harvested our first (and only, for this year) gooseberries; red and green and very small but sweet. They have been made into two small gooseberry crumbles, one for this evening and one to freeze.
N has been « grass grafting »; having discovered that in a lot of places the lawns overlap the paths by five or six inches, he has been cutting off the surplus while making a very fine edge, and using it to patch up various brown patches and gaps in the middle. The same principle as cutting off pastry round a tart.
We have achieved more indoors too, since we’ve been back here since last weekend. The plates (and some old family photos) are finally up on the walls in the dining room and hall; this has been a long time coming, mainly because I didn’t know where to get extra plate hangers - those little metal springing things which hold a plate in place and hang on the wall - but found some when we were visiting the porcelain factory in Worcester. There are no more spare pictures waiting to be hung now, although there are some spare frames and some lovely old advertising prints from an Italian calendar ready to be framed. Must find some backing paper. I cleaned all the pieces of the golden trolley which we brought from Saint-Denis, and N reassembled it. It looks very much at home in the grande pièce; the wood is a similar colour to the Italian dining room suite and the gold parts are like the yellow walls. It is in a temporary place until the bookshelves arrive.
Monday 10 July 2006
Am pleased to report that as France did not win the World Cup last night, we had an undisturbed night’s sleep! We - unusually - bought a copy of Le Figaro intrigued to read what was being said about Zidane’s behaviour. I am also pleased to say that the warm weather has returned; lunch in the garden under the pine tree for the first time in a while. Today I have frozen beetroot (cooked) and cabbage.
Tuesday July 11 2006
A different sort of day - N said he wanted a day when he didn’t get dirty, so he practised the viola most of the morning and I went to L’Aigle market on the bus. After yesterday’s high temperatures it was grey all the morning, and the bus took a slightly different route due to various road works, the bus-stop temporarily in the flower market, which was more convenient. I visited all the usual stalls and came away with some lovely poached salmon, Italian ham, strawberries, a potato masher (mainly for turnips) a cake tin and some unusual orange flowers whose name I have forgotten. I also bought a camembert cheese - having read that L’Aigle market is the home of camembert, from a stall which claimed to be the camembert stall. The lady serving tested several with her thumb before she was content to let me have one! She certainly knew her stuff; we had some for lunch and it was marvellous, certainly the best camembert I have ever tasted. I stopped and had a pastis at the usual café, before waiting for the bus; the temporary bus-stop home was opposite the curtain shop and the curtain lady came out and shook hands with me - progress! Not so good; having found an art shop where I thought I could get backing paper for my framing, found it had closed early for lunch.
This afternoon the van bringing the new bed and desk arrived about 2.45 and we were pleased to discover that the assembling of the desk was included; we had expected it to take us a good part of the afternoon, whereas it took the driver about 20 minutes. I found another bedspread from our vast collection which more or less went with the colour scheme and laid it over the bed for the moment; the desk fits very well under the eaves, and N has had fun deciding where to put what. The other table he had been using has been put to the left, also partly under the eaves.
While waiting for the delivery to arrive, he had begun to look at the measurements for the laying of the blue/grey mottled lino (found in the hayloft) in the downstairs shower room. This took us the whole of the rest of the afternoon, until about 7.00; laying the lino out on the terrace (weather having improved) cutting out the shape required for the main part, including the fiddly bit round the door. I then did the really difficult bit which went round and behind the loo, trying, as was the case when I painted the pipes, not to get my head stuck between the shower and the cistern; while outside in the garden N took about a centimetre off the bottom of the door so that it could close over the lino. At the moment the lino is just laying there on the floor getting used to the idea; tomorrow we will sweep underneath then stick. We also need a strip to go along the step out into the hall; and N has put a new piece of skirting board in place. The difference, I’m pleased to say, is amazing; the room looks far bigger. This was the room, you may remember, with pale blue and white patterned tiles on the walls and clashing black and yellow checked tiles on the floor. It is also the room which we inherited with no ceiling, minimum lighting and an awful old loo, bidet and hand basin. Apart from fresh paint and the new suite it now also has shelves, plants, pictures and a towel rail.
Wednesday 12 July 2006
Lino is now stuck in place on the shower room floor! Weather still very warm, breakfast and lunch in the garden, including own tomatoes and lettuce; have frozen stewed rhubarb and mashed turnip. Have still not heard anything from Monsieur A as to when the electrician(s) might come; presumably if not tomorrow then next week as national holiday/jour de fête on Friday.
The temperature was still in the low thirties when we got back here on Sunday afternoon, but now it’s much fresher and a bit cloudy. Up until a few days ago the World Cup was not having much effect on our lives, apart from taking up three-quarters of the TV news each day much to N’s annoyance, but as the French team progresses it’s getting more and more difficult to ignore. During the match against Brazil on Saturday evening we were at Saint-Denis watching a programme about the Medicis on a German channel, but were kept abreast of things by the cheers and fireworks outside the window. We thought perhaps things would be calmer away from Paris, but were wrong; on Wednesday evening after the win against Portugal cars and motor bikes roared up and down the road outside with horns sounding and trumpets blowing until well after midnight. As it was still very warm and thundery we had the bedroom French windows open, and got the full benefit of the noise. I am stoically prepared for another short night’s sleep on Sunday, whatever happens.
Two of the most urgent things once we got back here were contacting Monsieur P the carpenter about the shutters and Monsieur A concerning the unfinished electrical work; to let them know that we were now back for some while, and to find out how soon they were able to come. I was quite prepared for them both to be on holiday, so was pleasantly surprised when I got a call from Monsieur P on Monday morning apologising for the long delay, and saying that he could come on Tuesday morning. Unusually, I already had two appointments for that morning; the delivery of the new freezer at 9.30 and the hairdresser at 11.00 so fitted him in at 10.00. In the event the freezer arrived at 9.15 when we were still having a very warm breakfast outside on the terrace for the first time under a green and white striped parasol from Italy, which gives a lovely holiday feel to the place, especially with the white garden furniture. The freezer fitted well into the place prepared for it in the first outhouse - N had painted the walls white the day before - and the extension lead was put into place and everything switched on.
Monsieur P arrived on time and was here almost an hour, right up to the time I left for the hairdresser. We all three went all round inspecting the shutters on the ground floor; he measured everything in great detail, and we learned a lot of new « shutter » vocabulary. While we were (carefully) standing on the pavement discussing the two grande pièce shutters which front onto the road, Marie -Antoinette came along with her bread and there was some lively banter between her and Monsieur P, during which it transpired that they had known each other a long time, he had fitted her shutters, that he was 57 and due to retire in 10 years time, and that she was about to go and get some « pick your own » strawberries, somewhere between Rugles and L‘Aigle. She said wasn’t I making any strawberry jam this year, and I tried to give the impression that of course I was, whereas in reality N has requisitioned my preserving pan to collect ash from the fire and has promised to replace it but hasn’t done so yet. All this went on while heavy lorries thundered past between us, but we were cheered by Monsieur P saying that the by-pass would definitely come, it was just a matter of when. (Last time he said they had been talking about it for 15 years) I thought perhaps there might be a day in the future when there were no more heavy lorries, and we had fine new shutters and might be able to leave them open and hold civilised conversations with neighbours across the road.
All the while this was going on the sky was getting darker and darker, and by the time Monsieur P was loading old shutters into his van (to re-use the metal joints at the bottom, whose name I have forgotten) rain began to fall in big drops and there were claps of thunder. We lent him one of N’s waterproof jackets, and N put on the other and I carried the board with all the notes and measurements, and then had to say goodbye and leave for my appointment.
He will contact us when replacement shutters have been made, will check they fit properly; N will paint them then Monsieur P will finally fit them. We are very confident this will be a job well done. After the hairdresser - entertaining as usual - I phoned Monsieur A, and said that the box full of wires (found it difficult to describe this) in the boiler room needing closing up and that there were two neon lights to be fitted in the atelier, plus other things to finish, about a day’s work in all. He gave his usual reply; it might this week or next, but he would give us a call. I met him in the Quincaillerie this morning , and he said it would be next week.
The other recurring theme this week has been the freezing of vegetables and vegetable soup, once the freezer was in position to accommodate them. On Monday it was broccoli and cauliflower, on Tuesday lettuce soup, on Wednesday spinach and on Thursday more lettuce soup. Freezing and blanching begins with the boiling of vast pans of water - I feel as though I am preparing for a home birth - and a production line of colanders, sink of iced water, drying in the salad spinner (a good tip) and bags and wire ties to finish it all off. We have also done panic buying of freezer bags and boxes, in Bernay on Tuesday and at Champion at Conches today. We have harvested more peas, beans, spring onions and potatoes and I have rather unsuccessfully made a rhubarb tart, well we were getting a little tired of crumble. Every so often N appears at the kitchen window and hands some produce through; sometimes he asks what will be needed in the kitchen that day, as though he were Head Gardener at a Big House. Which of course he is.
Apart from cleaning and painting the first outhouse, N has made great progress with some of the others. Thinking now of the possibility of using the two studio rooms for his musical party in August, he has fitted wall and ceiling lights (too long to wait for Emanuel!) and I have covered with one of our surplus bedspreads the old foam sofa which was left there. If only we can get the very large heavy table onto its feet - we are waiting until there are several very strong people here - it will look great. As I write, he is fixing a lock on the door. The room which leads into this which we call The Potting Shed and where all the gardening things are stored also had a makeover yesterday. We took two of the wall cupboards from the old kitchen, put them at either end of the front wall and laid a long piece of work surface (also from the old kitchen) over the top. We put all the empty flower pots underneath, and packets of various products and tools on the shelves of the cupboards. All much tidier looking and more efficient, and a surface on which to plant pots, as opposed to one’s hands and knees on the grass outside.
Indoors, N has now set up his electronic keyboard in his attic study. On Sunday evening he had it in organ mode, and it sounded very choral evensong as I went up the stairs. It was so hot up there that he had taken his shirt off to play, and reminded me of the clip from Monty Python where the naked organ player turns round to grin at the audience. On Tuesday afternoon we went to the Sesame store at Bernay to order a single bed for the attic, ready for August. We had last been there in the winter, to order our mattress and television, and as luck would have it, it was sale time again and we managed to order a reduced-price mattress and base which will be delivered next Tuesday afternoon. On our way out, N saw a computer desk he liked the look of - having finally decided he would have an extra computer up there - so added that to the order as well. We then went on to Lapeyre, also for the first time in ages, to see about blinds for the Velux roof windows in the two attic rooms, and to try and get the product for cleaning the broyeur loo, which we had been unable to find anywhere else. N went back with the measurements of the roof windows yesterday (he had to take his light fitting back to Monsieur Bricolage to be fixed) but we have to collect the sanitising product after Saturday. He also bought two electric fans at Monsieur Bricolage, so will no longer have to take his shirt off to play the organ, but as so often happens, it is now not nearly so hot, anyway. The principal reason for the fans is the comfort of our guests in August, however!
There was a slight accident yesterday, N came to the kitchen window and asked if I’d heard the crash; I thought it must be the rake falling onto one of the cloches again, but I was wrong. He had fitted up a swing which had come from Italy onto a low (apparently hollow) branch of the apple tree, and the whole branch had broken off, and he had fallen - not very far - onto the ground. Fortunately it hasn’t altered the shape of the apple tree too much (and not altered his shape at all), but took a lot of valuable time carting off the broken bits under the wide pine tree; at least they will make good firewood once the leaves have died off. We have also rescued the apples concerned and put them in basket in the outhouse in the hope of using them for mint jelly. When I have a spare moment.
Saturday 8 July 2006
There was a ring at the doorbell just before dinner last night; it was Monsieur P calling in with a detailed estimate of the costs of the shutters. He refused an apéritif, saying it was something he never did; we weren’t sure if he meant apéritifs or alcohol in general. He was wearing his shorts as he had cycled here, and told us how much he was cycling and how much weight he was losing. I explained that I had my bicycle here, but had only gone as far as the recycling area, and he said I could go a little further than that. I have in fact started up what I hope will be regular exercise DVDs again after a gap, and I should think all these « veg & two veg » meals must be doing me some good.
N is trying to clear parts of the vegetable garden to plant second sowings of various things; he has been surprised that some things have grown so early and so plentifully, and I am hoping next year they won’t come quite so all at the same time. We have a huge basket of very pretty purple turnips in the first outhouse; I have frozen a few in chunks and plan to freeze some purée too. Have also frozen more cauliflower florets, and despite its size, the freezer is filling up.
Sunday 9 July 2006
Last night we had Egg Florentine with some very fresh spinach, followed by vanilla ice cream with some of our own currants (red, black and white) sprinkled over the top. This morning I tried a recipe for Sorrel, Pea, Lettuce and Spring Onion Soup, which was excellent and just the ingredients we have to hand. It came from Rick Stein’s French Odyssey cook book, given to me as a leaving Cambridge present by Will at the office; it went into store before I had a chance to read it, and I have only lately consulted it, so if you are out there Will, thank you. (Thank you to Rick Stein too!) Another book proving invaluable at the moment is Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, given to me by the Capelin family some time in the late 1980’s; a mixture of dictionary, history and recipe book. This afternoon N has harvested our first (and only, for this year) gooseberries; red and green and very small but sweet. They have been made into two small gooseberry crumbles, one for this evening and one to freeze.
N has been « grass grafting »; having discovered that in a lot of places the lawns overlap the paths by five or six inches, he has been cutting off the surplus while making a very fine edge, and using it to patch up various brown patches and gaps in the middle. The same principle as cutting off pastry round a tart.
We have achieved more indoors too, since we’ve been back here since last weekend. The plates (and some old family photos) are finally up on the walls in the dining room and hall; this has been a long time coming, mainly because I didn’t know where to get extra plate hangers - those little metal springing things which hold a plate in place and hang on the wall - but found some when we were visiting the porcelain factory in Worcester. There are no more spare pictures waiting to be hung now, although there are some spare frames and some lovely old advertising prints from an Italian calendar ready to be framed. Must find some backing paper. I cleaned all the pieces of the golden trolley which we brought from Saint-Denis, and N reassembled it. It looks very much at home in the grande pièce; the wood is a similar colour to the Italian dining room suite and the gold parts are like the yellow walls. It is in a temporary place until the bookshelves arrive.
Monday 10 July 2006
Am pleased to report that as France did not win the World Cup last night, we had an undisturbed night’s sleep! We - unusually - bought a copy of Le Figaro intrigued to read what was being said about Zidane’s behaviour. I am also pleased to say that the warm weather has returned; lunch in the garden under the pine tree for the first time in a while. Today I have frozen beetroot (cooked) and cabbage.
Tuesday July 11 2006
A different sort of day - N said he wanted a day when he didn’t get dirty, so he practised the viola most of the morning and I went to L’Aigle market on the bus. After yesterday’s high temperatures it was grey all the morning, and the bus took a slightly different route due to various road works, the bus-stop temporarily in the flower market, which was more convenient. I visited all the usual stalls and came away with some lovely poached salmon, Italian ham, strawberries, a potato masher (mainly for turnips) a cake tin and some unusual orange flowers whose name I have forgotten. I also bought a camembert cheese - having read that L’Aigle market is the home of camembert, from a stall which claimed to be the camembert stall. The lady serving tested several with her thumb before she was content to let me have one! She certainly knew her stuff; we had some for lunch and it was marvellous, certainly the best camembert I have ever tasted. I stopped and had a pastis at the usual café, before waiting for the bus; the temporary bus-stop home was opposite the curtain shop and the curtain lady came out and shook hands with me - progress! Not so good; having found an art shop where I thought I could get backing paper for my framing, found it had closed early for lunch.
This afternoon the van bringing the new bed and desk arrived about 2.45 and we were pleased to discover that the assembling of the desk was included; we had expected it to take us a good part of the afternoon, whereas it took the driver about 20 minutes. I found another bedspread from our vast collection which more or less went with the colour scheme and laid it over the bed for the moment; the desk fits very well under the eaves, and N has had fun deciding where to put what. The other table he had been using has been put to the left, also partly under the eaves.
While waiting for the delivery to arrive, he had begun to look at the measurements for the laying of the blue/grey mottled lino (found in the hayloft) in the downstairs shower room. This took us the whole of the rest of the afternoon, until about 7.00; laying the lino out on the terrace (weather having improved) cutting out the shape required for the main part, including the fiddly bit round the door. I then did the really difficult bit which went round and behind the loo, trying, as was the case when I painted the pipes, not to get my head stuck between the shower and the cistern; while outside in the garden N took about a centimetre off the bottom of the door so that it could close over the lino. At the moment the lino is just laying there on the floor getting used to the idea; tomorrow we will sweep underneath then stick. We also need a strip to go along the step out into the hall; and N has put a new piece of skirting board in place. The difference, I’m pleased to say, is amazing; the room looks far bigger. This was the room, you may remember, with pale blue and white patterned tiles on the walls and clashing black and yellow checked tiles on the floor. It is also the room which we inherited with no ceiling, minimum lighting and an awful old loo, bidet and hand basin. Apart from fresh paint and the new suite it now also has shelves, plants, pictures and a towel rail.
Wednesday 12 July 2006
Lino is now stuck in place on the shower room floor! Weather still very warm, breakfast and lunch in the garden, including own tomatoes and lettuce; have frozen stewed rhubarb and mashed turnip. Have still not heard anything from Monsieur A as to when the electrician(s) might come; presumably if not tomorrow then next week as national holiday/jour de fête on Friday.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Sunday 25 June 2006
The day before leaving for the UK we watered the garden at La Neuve-Lyre thoroughly as planned, only to be overtaken by thunderstorms in the early evening, and then the weather was so warm and airless that for the first time ever we slept with the bedroom French windows open to the balcony. All of our journey to Calais the next morning (6.30 to 10.30 am) was in pouring rain too; a grey and uneventful crossing on the boat, and the same heavy rain as we entered Dover, which surprised us after having heard much about a drought in Kent.
Our first stop was Shenfield in Essex with N’s elder daughter Kathryn and family, and then on to Cambridge, where N left the next day after the College Feast and I stayed until Saturday morning. The weather had improved by the time we went to my college garden party in the afternoon before the feast, and before that we visited my ex-cat Albertine in her not-so-new home; the first time N had seen her since September. She seemed well and very relaxed, and it was good to see her new family again.
We decided that June was a very good time to re-visit Cambridge: apart from college events we walked round gardens at their best, and on the Friday I went with a friend to a May Week Concert offering local strawberries and Pimms, and some rousing music including «Land of Hope and Glory ». As last time, I caught up with work colleagues and shopping before going on to my family in Suffolk over the weekend, by which time the weather was even warmer. On Monday morning I caught the train back to Shenfield, where N met me and we set off straight way for Worcester to stay with his other daughter Claire whom I had met when she came to stay at Saint-Denis in April. Neither he nor I had ever been to Worcester before, so we were looking forward to the experience; me for the Elgar connections and N hoping to find some Worcester Sauce. We visited Elgar’s birthplace - a delightful little cottage - and also the cathedral and the Worcester porcelain factory, but failed to find the source of the sauce, apart from seeing a pub called The Sauce Factory. The weather got colder and extremely windy; we had a picnic by the river at Evesham and everything nearly blew away, but we all enjoyed the museum. N and I had another day out in Stratford-on-Avon - the first time he had been there - which disappointed us a little; so many tourists and unlike Worcester not many interesting little shops and buildings. On the outskirts on our way back we found the local Tesco where we started shopping for things to take back to France; for many years on trips like these N has stocked up with baked beans, tomato soup, Marmite, Bovril, ginger wine, rare English jams and all sorts of pickles and chutneys. To this I added suet and Camp Coffee for coffee cakes and chocolate chips for cookies. On Thursday evening we had some very good English fish and chips for supper!
By Friday - the day we left - the weather was better again, a pity as we spent all day in the car. We left Worcester just before 9 am, arrived early and luckily found a Sainsbury’s in Canterbury where we finished off our shopping (including Cumberland sausages and Crunchies for N and a cool bag to keep them in) and were still in time to get on an earlier boat than scheduled. This was a much nicer crossing, clear, calm and bright with a sparkly sea.
Despite the earlier crossing and the fact at it was light until almost 10.30 pm, we didn’t arrive home in La Neuve-Lyre until after midnight; we were prepared for another four-hour journey but it was even longer as we missed a turning at Rouen (a very confusing place) We need to get this route sorted out for the benefit of our guests; especially those coming in August to whom we had said goodbye that morning! Fortunately we found ourselves in Evreux, so managed to find our way, and came through the forest of Conches for the first time in pitch darkness, where a wild boar trotted across the road in our headlights, and we saw another car stopped by gendarmes; another first, I have never seen any police around here before. N was afraid we would disturb the swallows in the garage coming back in the middle of the night, as after ten days they probably thought we had flown off to South Africa, and one did fly round and round agitatedly just after we drove in.
As soon as it was light on Saturday we looked at the garden; lots of the roses are nearly over but the vegetables held up well. N watered everything all day on and off, including sprinkling the lawn with a sprinkler he found here and I got two loads of washing dry, and managed to find a few roses and Canterbury bells to pick, dodging in and out of the sprinkler. Lots of the vegetables were ready to eat, and as before every time I came into the kitchen there seemed to be some new offering left by the Vegetable Fairy; a month or so ago it was radishes, lettuces and rhubarb; yesterday there was still rhubarb and lettuce but also beetroot, cherries, three lovely purple turnips, spring onions and broccoli. It’s like a permanent game of « Ready, Steady, Cook » deciding the best way to use them all, and I have spent much time researching in recipe books I haven‘t consulted in years. But as N says, that’s what we’re here for! I so enjoyed shopping in the village again, especially at the boulangerie, also making a hair appointment for N with the hairdresser, and visiting the Quincaillerie for more glue - a tube that was left on the table in the verandah - ready for gluing more window frames as soon as we got back - had burst in the heat and stuck itself to the table. Fortunately N has managed to get it all off.
The day was hazy and overcast but warm, but in the middle of the night I heard thunder and today we have woken up to grey skies and continuous pouring rain all day. It’s the first non-sunny day here for such a long time, not even worth having breakfast in the verandah. However, it will do the poor brown patchy lawn good, and fill the water butt nicely.
Tuesday 27 June 2006
Well it would have done if N hadn’t forgotten to undo the tap again. Fortunately, once he remembered the rain continued all day Sunday and all night again, only clearing by midday on Monday. The lawn looks slightly better, but lots of petals have been dashed down. It was very grey when I went along to the market; I checked availability for various vegetable plants for N, and bought three trays of busy lizzies to replace all the pansies and violas that had died before and while were away. In the afternoon when it suddenly got hot again we were visiting Bernay; N had ordered some wood which wasn’t really urgent now, but thought he’d better go and collect it, and I went back to the stationers to get more document racks for the study and was pleased to find they also stocked cartridges for my fountain pen. We visited the garden centre and I bought green plants for the shelves in the verandah and put them in pots brought from Cambridge (originally from the Salvation Army shop in Mill Road) N said it all looked very Homes & Gardens, and I said that was the idea.
I found an interesting selection of post waiting for me on my return, and found it best to sort it into English (things from college and UK banks) and French. These consisted of a worrying letter from EDF saying they had not received my electricity payment - on phoning them it turned out they now had; letters must have been crossing very slowly; bank statements, publicity from TPS our satellite TV providers, a generic thank-you letter from the organisers of the Saint John Passion in April, and a letter from the social security in Bernay about breast screening - this will be a good excuse to introduce myself to the local GP.
Dealing with garden produce now takes up a lot of time each day; I froze some broccoli as an experiment - into the freezer about 20 minutes after having been cut - must look and see how it is next week. We had Chou Lyonnais for lunch with ham, using up a whole cabbage, and on returning from Bernay I made a spinach tart with a vast amount of spinach harvested yesterday and successfully using ricotta instead of the cottage cheese the recipe suggested. I was very pleased with the pastry; made in the food processor and much better than the hand-made cheese pastry I tried here before. We ate the tart with home-grown lettuce and our very first peas - about two tablespoonfuls - they seemed to take forever to shell, but I told myself it is a rare privilege to be able to shell and eat one’s own garden peas.
We have done so many things today that we have lost track of them all; I did my Pilates video for the first time in ages, then planted all my new busy lizzies in window boxes, urns, troughs and hanging pots, swept the front garden and path after N had clipped the Virginia creeper along the front gate; it was beginning to look like Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Then a load of washing, lunch - cold spinach tart, salad and a handful of new potatoes which suddenly appeared in the kitchen, wonderful with mint from the windowsill! I then made sorrel soup for the first time ever with a huge pile of sorrel which had been waiting since yesterday, and while it was simmering made coffee cake - as with the pastry, much better the second time; I think I am getting the measure of the oven. After tea I finished the soup, did my nails, typed a letter and ironed a few things, thinking from time to time that there were those who described my new life as that of a lady of leisure! We cautiously ate some of the sorrel soup for dinner; it has a rather bitter acquired taste. N’s day consisted of having his hair cut at the local salon - they told him how amazingly thick my hair was! - trimming the large shrubs, weeding, picking cherries and currants, painting and positioning the last piece of wood for the verandah window frame, planting celeriac and new rockery plants, tidying the old rockery, enlarging the flower bed in the front garden and having a bonfire.
Thursday 29 June 2006
We are now back in Saint-Denis, having driven here yesterday afternoon, in order to be here for a lunch engagement at the Sorbonne. This was provisionally arranged on the day of the thesis, and received confirmation by e-mail. I was very sorry to leave LNL, as is so often the case; not only was the weather just getting hot again and I wanted to spend time in the garden, but there are so many things to do there, and having just unpacked a bag I had not much enthusiasm for packing one up again. However, we are only due to be here until Sunday, and N did his best to book tickets for an opera or ballet (I think to convince me of the advantages of coming back to Paris) but in vain, as everything was sold out. The Saint-Denis Music Festival is finishing this weekend, but I expect that is sold out too.
In the morning before leaving LNL, we walked round to the department of Chretien (the Quincaillerie) which sells electrical goods and ordered a freezer to be delivered next week which will go in the first outhouse. This is as a result of realising that all the garden produce we want to freeze - and the resulting soups, tarts etc - will not fit into the small freezer in the kitchen. It will also mean that advance catering for the family music party at the end of August will be a lot easier. Since getting back from the UK we have spent a lot of time discussing the arrangements for this; N’s family for about 6 days and extra musical friends for Saturday and Sunday only. Not for the first time I am beginning to feel like the housekeeper character in the film Gosford Park; constantly counting sheets and pillows and deciding who will sleep in which room.
N was anxious to get back and deal with a very large pile of post that had accumulated for him here at Saint-Denis; usually if there is anything for me at this address it is not anything important, but this time I was delighted to find at long last the all the documents and deeds relating to the purchase of the house! We had expected them to come from the notaire at Evreux to LNL, but instead they had come from « my » notaire down the road in Saint-Denis, to the apartment here. What was even more interesting was a refund cheque for 127 euros - I can’t imagine anything like that happening as a result of an English house sale. The document is mainly the text of the proceedings during the signing last December, but also includes interesting details of previous owners of the house.
Friday 30 June 2006
The lunch yesterday was very enjoyable; it was planned as a gathering of emeritus professors but a few lecturers came along too, we were seven in all and I was the only conjoint. We ate in the Sorbonne « club », a restaurant for teaching staff; the food was excellent and the service much quicker than at a restaurant. I talked to an eminent little lady next to me who had been an au pair in London in 1947. Afterwards we took a bus from the Boulevard St Michel to Châtelet, lovely warm sunshine (weather forecast promising temperatures up to 29 and 30 ) and full of people; I must go back again and visit it slowly some time. We looked at the plant and pet shops along the Quai de la Megisserie, and at Conforama and Habitat in search of single beds for the attic at LNL, but there was nothing suitable. On our way to the Grande Poste at the Louvre (for stamps) we passed a large imposing shop selling kitchenware and crockery for the restaurant trade which we have seen several times but never visited before. We decided to go in and buy a cherry stoner to help us with all our produce, and had a good look round; a fascinating place.
This afternoon I went into Paris to a free concert at the Madeleine while N tackled the garden. It seemed a pity not to hear any music at all while I was here, and what I heard was very enjoyable; an excellent American high school choir singing Byrd, Duruflé and some negro spirituals. The shops at the Forum des Halles were full of sales, and I found a lovely dress for 29 euros in my new favourite shop - Jacqueline Riu - brown cotton/linen with beads round the neck and hem.
We have also caught up with things in the apartment here, despite the heat. This morning - after supermarket shopping at Auchan - we brought the car round to the apartment and filled it with boxes of wine to go to the cellar at LNL, also N’s keyboard plus its stand and stool, for which there is more room there than here. We also dismantled the gilt trolley destined for LNL; although we haven’t yet found a new cupboard to replace it brought down a small temporary wall cupboard from the attic.
The day before leaving for the UK we watered the garden at La Neuve-Lyre thoroughly as planned, only to be overtaken by thunderstorms in the early evening, and then the weather was so warm and airless that for the first time ever we slept with the bedroom French windows open to the balcony. All of our journey to Calais the next morning (6.30 to 10.30 am) was in pouring rain too; a grey and uneventful crossing on the boat, and the same heavy rain as we entered Dover, which surprised us after having heard much about a drought in Kent.
Our first stop was Shenfield in Essex with N’s elder daughter Kathryn and family, and then on to Cambridge, where N left the next day after the College Feast and I stayed until Saturday morning. The weather had improved by the time we went to my college garden party in the afternoon before the feast, and before that we visited my ex-cat Albertine in her not-so-new home; the first time N had seen her since September. She seemed well and very relaxed, and it was good to see her new family again.
We decided that June was a very good time to re-visit Cambridge: apart from college events we walked round gardens at their best, and on the Friday I went with a friend to a May Week Concert offering local strawberries and Pimms, and some rousing music including «Land of Hope and Glory ». As last time, I caught up with work colleagues and shopping before going on to my family in Suffolk over the weekend, by which time the weather was even warmer. On Monday morning I caught the train back to Shenfield, where N met me and we set off straight way for Worcester to stay with his other daughter Claire whom I had met when she came to stay at Saint-Denis in April. Neither he nor I had ever been to Worcester before, so we were looking forward to the experience; me for the Elgar connections and N hoping to find some Worcester Sauce. We visited Elgar’s birthplace - a delightful little cottage - and also the cathedral and the Worcester porcelain factory, but failed to find the source of the sauce, apart from seeing a pub called The Sauce Factory. The weather got colder and extremely windy; we had a picnic by the river at Evesham and everything nearly blew away, but we all enjoyed the museum. N and I had another day out in Stratford-on-Avon - the first time he had been there - which disappointed us a little; so many tourists and unlike Worcester not many interesting little shops and buildings. On the outskirts on our way back we found the local Tesco where we started shopping for things to take back to France; for many years on trips like these N has stocked up with baked beans, tomato soup, Marmite, Bovril, ginger wine, rare English jams and all sorts of pickles and chutneys. To this I added suet and Camp Coffee for coffee cakes and chocolate chips for cookies. On Thursday evening we had some very good English fish and chips for supper!
By Friday - the day we left - the weather was better again, a pity as we spent all day in the car. We left Worcester just before 9 am, arrived early and luckily found a Sainsbury’s in Canterbury where we finished off our shopping (including Cumberland sausages and Crunchies for N and a cool bag to keep them in) and were still in time to get on an earlier boat than scheduled. This was a much nicer crossing, clear, calm and bright with a sparkly sea.
Despite the earlier crossing and the fact at it was light until almost 10.30 pm, we didn’t arrive home in La Neuve-Lyre until after midnight; we were prepared for another four-hour journey but it was even longer as we missed a turning at Rouen (a very confusing place) We need to get this route sorted out for the benefit of our guests; especially those coming in August to whom we had said goodbye that morning! Fortunately we found ourselves in Evreux, so managed to find our way, and came through the forest of Conches for the first time in pitch darkness, where a wild boar trotted across the road in our headlights, and we saw another car stopped by gendarmes; another first, I have never seen any police around here before. N was afraid we would disturb the swallows in the garage coming back in the middle of the night, as after ten days they probably thought we had flown off to South Africa, and one did fly round and round agitatedly just after we drove in.
As soon as it was light on Saturday we looked at the garden; lots of the roses are nearly over but the vegetables held up well. N watered everything all day on and off, including sprinkling the lawn with a sprinkler he found here and I got two loads of washing dry, and managed to find a few roses and Canterbury bells to pick, dodging in and out of the sprinkler. Lots of the vegetables were ready to eat, and as before every time I came into the kitchen there seemed to be some new offering left by the Vegetable Fairy; a month or so ago it was radishes, lettuces and rhubarb; yesterday there was still rhubarb and lettuce but also beetroot, cherries, three lovely purple turnips, spring onions and broccoli. It’s like a permanent game of « Ready, Steady, Cook » deciding the best way to use them all, and I have spent much time researching in recipe books I haven‘t consulted in years. But as N says, that’s what we’re here for! I so enjoyed shopping in the village again, especially at the boulangerie, also making a hair appointment for N with the hairdresser, and visiting the Quincaillerie for more glue - a tube that was left on the table in the verandah - ready for gluing more window frames as soon as we got back - had burst in the heat and stuck itself to the table. Fortunately N has managed to get it all off.
The day was hazy and overcast but warm, but in the middle of the night I heard thunder and today we have woken up to grey skies and continuous pouring rain all day. It’s the first non-sunny day here for such a long time, not even worth having breakfast in the verandah. However, it will do the poor brown patchy lawn good, and fill the water butt nicely.
Tuesday 27 June 2006
Well it would have done if N hadn’t forgotten to undo the tap again. Fortunately, once he remembered the rain continued all day Sunday and all night again, only clearing by midday on Monday. The lawn looks slightly better, but lots of petals have been dashed down. It was very grey when I went along to the market; I checked availability for various vegetable plants for N, and bought three trays of busy lizzies to replace all the pansies and violas that had died before and while were away. In the afternoon when it suddenly got hot again we were visiting Bernay; N had ordered some wood which wasn’t really urgent now, but thought he’d better go and collect it, and I went back to the stationers to get more document racks for the study and was pleased to find they also stocked cartridges for my fountain pen. We visited the garden centre and I bought green plants for the shelves in the verandah and put them in pots brought from Cambridge (originally from the Salvation Army shop in Mill Road) N said it all looked very Homes & Gardens, and I said that was the idea.
I found an interesting selection of post waiting for me on my return, and found it best to sort it into English (things from college and UK banks) and French. These consisted of a worrying letter from EDF saying they had not received my electricity payment - on phoning them it turned out they now had; letters must have been crossing very slowly; bank statements, publicity from TPS our satellite TV providers, a generic thank-you letter from the organisers of the Saint John Passion in April, and a letter from the social security in Bernay about breast screening - this will be a good excuse to introduce myself to the local GP.
Dealing with garden produce now takes up a lot of time each day; I froze some broccoli as an experiment - into the freezer about 20 minutes after having been cut - must look and see how it is next week. We had Chou Lyonnais for lunch with ham, using up a whole cabbage, and on returning from Bernay I made a spinach tart with a vast amount of spinach harvested yesterday and successfully using ricotta instead of the cottage cheese the recipe suggested. I was very pleased with the pastry; made in the food processor and much better than the hand-made cheese pastry I tried here before. We ate the tart with home-grown lettuce and our very first peas - about two tablespoonfuls - they seemed to take forever to shell, but I told myself it is a rare privilege to be able to shell and eat one’s own garden peas.
We have done so many things today that we have lost track of them all; I did my Pilates video for the first time in ages, then planted all my new busy lizzies in window boxes, urns, troughs and hanging pots, swept the front garden and path after N had clipped the Virginia creeper along the front gate; it was beginning to look like Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Then a load of washing, lunch - cold spinach tart, salad and a handful of new potatoes which suddenly appeared in the kitchen, wonderful with mint from the windowsill! I then made sorrel soup for the first time ever with a huge pile of sorrel which had been waiting since yesterday, and while it was simmering made coffee cake - as with the pastry, much better the second time; I think I am getting the measure of the oven. After tea I finished the soup, did my nails, typed a letter and ironed a few things, thinking from time to time that there were those who described my new life as that of a lady of leisure! We cautiously ate some of the sorrel soup for dinner; it has a rather bitter acquired taste. N’s day consisted of having his hair cut at the local salon - they told him how amazingly thick my hair was! - trimming the large shrubs, weeding, picking cherries and currants, painting and positioning the last piece of wood for the verandah window frame, planting celeriac and new rockery plants, tidying the old rockery, enlarging the flower bed in the front garden and having a bonfire.
Thursday 29 June 2006
We are now back in Saint-Denis, having driven here yesterday afternoon, in order to be here for a lunch engagement at the Sorbonne. This was provisionally arranged on the day of the thesis, and received confirmation by e-mail. I was very sorry to leave LNL, as is so often the case; not only was the weather just getting hot again and I wanted to spend time in the garden, but there are so many things to do there, and having just unpacked a bag I had not much enthusiasm for packing one up again. However, we are only due to be here until Sunday, and N did his best to book tickets for an opera or ballet (I think to convince me of the advantages of coming back to Paris) but in vain, as everything was sold out. The Saint-Denis Music Festival is finishing this weekend, but I expect that is sold out too.
In the morning before leaving LNL, we walked round to the department of Chretien (the Quincaillerie) which sells electrical goods and ordered a freezer to be delivered next week which will go in the first outhouse. This is as a result of realising that all the garden produce we want to freeze - and the resulting soups, tarts etc - will not fit into the small freezer in the kitchen. It will also mean that advance catering for the family music party at the end of August will be a lot easier. Since getting back from the UK we have spent a lot of time discussing the arrangements for this; N’s family for about 6 days and extra musical friends for Saturday and Sunday only. Not for the first time I am beginning to feel like the housekeeper character in the film Gosford Park; constantly counting sheets and pillows and deciding who will sleep in which room.
N was anxious to get back and deal with a very large pile of post that had accumulated for him here at Saint-Denis; usually if there is anything for me at this address it is not anything important, but this time I was delighted to find at long last the all the documents and deeds relating to the purchase of the house! We had expected them to come from the notaire at Evreux to LNL, but instead they had come from « my » notaire down the road in Saint-Denis, to the apartment here. What was even more interesting was a refund cheque for 127 euros - I can’t imagine anything like that happening as a result of an English house sale. The document is mainly the text of the proceedings during the signing last December, but also includes interesting details of previous owners of the house.
Friday 30 June 2006
The lunch yesterday was very enjoyable; it was planned as a gathering of emeritus professors but a few lecturers came along too, we were seven in all and I was the only conjoint. We ate in the Sorbonne « club », a restaurant for teaching staff; the food was excellent and the service much quicker than at a restaurant. I talked to an eminent little lady next to me who had been an au pair in London in 1947. Afterwards we took a bus from the Boulevard St Michel to Châtelet, lovely warm sunshine (weather forecast promising temperatures up to 29 and 30 ) and full of people; I must go back again and visit it slowly some time. We looked at the plant and pet shops along the Quai de la Megisserie, and at Conforama and Habitat in search of single beds for the attic at LNL, but there was nothing suitable. On our way to the Grande Poste at the Louvre (for stamps) we passed a large imposing shop selling kitchenware and crockery for the restaurant trade which we have seen several times but never visited before. We decided to go in and buy a cherry stoner to help us with all our produce, and had a good look round; a fascinating place.
This afternoon I went into Paris to a free concert at the Madeleine while N tackled the garden. It seemed a pity not to hear any music at all while I was here, and what I heard was very enjoyable; an excellent American high school choir singing Byrd, Duruflé and some negro spirituals. The shops at the Forum des Halles were full of sales, and I found a lovely dress for 29 euros in my new favourite shop - Jacqueline Riu - brown cotton/linen with beads round the neck and hem.
We have also caught up with things in the apartment here, despite the heat. This morning - after supermarket shopping at Auchan - we brought the car round to the apartment and filled it with boxes of wine to go to the cellar at LNL, also N’s keyboard plus its stand and stool, for which there is more room there than here. We also dismantled the gilt trolley destined for LNL; although we haven’t yet found a new cupboard to replace it brought down a small temporary wall cupboard from the attic.
