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.
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 3:27 AM 
