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!
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 12:36 PM 
