Sunday, September 10, 2006
Thursday 7 September 2006
At this time of year I always find myself thinking « this is where I came in », even more so now as it will soon be a year since I came to live in France. On both occasions when I lived here before I arrived end September/beginning October at the start of the academic year, and in the years in between have often found myself starting something new in September, sometimes living in a new place too. I have always loved the French concept of the « Rentrée », so much more than « Back to School » in English, as so many people here go away to the country or the sea for the whole of the summer, so many activities and businesses stop for the whole of August, that with the rentrée you feel everything is starting up again.
It’s just as well, as after our house party for which we had been making plans for months, for as long as we have had this house and even before, we need something new to turn our ideas to! The garden produce continues to keep us busy; all the potatoes have be lifted and are in either the first outhouse or the wine cellar, the onions are all hanging to dry, we have had some of the first parsnips and are still enjoying lettuces, turnips, carrots and beans. N has even bought new plants for next spring, salads and cauliflowers. The most obvious crop at the moment is the apples, smallish and red, we don’t know what kind they are, or even what they are intended for (a useful picture chart at the garden centre divides apples into four categories: eating, cooking, cider and juice; we think we’ll have to take one of ours along to compare, or perhaps ask somebody there.) There are lots of windfalls, some too small to do anything with, but we have made mint jelly in the new copper jam pan, and enjoyed it with lamb chops from the local boucherie. (It took a long time to find a place to hang the jelly bag, bought on our trip to Worcester, but I eventually saw where we could hang a pole over the bench in the potting shed.) I have also made apple sauce for the freezer and apple purée for dessert.
We finally had word from Odile, our expected guest in early August. She maintained that as she had had no news from us, and no phone number (neither of which was the case!) she didn’t call in. It is now getting very near her second planned visit, complete with friend. Watch this space.
At the end of last week we decided it was time for another outing. I seemed to be spending all my time washing and ironing after the guests had left, and N painting shutters in the outhouse, and we felt like a day off. The forecast was very good for Friday so we decided to go to Alençon for the day, partly as we live in the rue d’Alençon (although the road doesn’t go there; we don’t know what the connection is.)
I looked at the website for the town of Alençon the day before, found many interesting things and also a link with details of a new motorway going down the west of France from Bordeaux to Rouen and up to the coast, which N wanted to investigate. We had heard about this from the English couple we met at the Bovary lunch, who claimed after 15 years of taking 3 or 4 hours to get to Calais, they now did it in just over two, joining this new motorway just north of Bernay. N also thought this might be why Dan got lost and ended up at Broglie on the way here, if the AA had sent him details of the brand new route.
It was fascinating travelling along a new road - not much traffic! - and even more interesting seeing a brand newly built service station, where we stopped to have a look and do some shopping, which got very hot in the car during the rest of the day. It was lunchtime when we arrived and the tourist office was closed, so no map; we found our own way round. Alençon is a very pretty historic town with an interesting variety of old buildings and car-free centre. We found a restaurant to have lunch, part of a chain but very good; I had excellent salmon, and N duck. I had seen from the website that there was a lace-making tradition, and an exhibition - called Froufrous - of lace dresses dating from between 1865 and 1905; and we came upon the museum by accident, there was also an exhibit of medieval bestiaries next door. I went to the dresses and N to the bestiaries, and we agreed to meet an hour later. As soon as I had got my ticket I was told that the « dentellière » (lace-maker) was about to give her demonstration, so hurried along and joined four or five other ladies round a table. (It felt very like being at the WI) We were told that Alençon lace is the only lace made entirely with needle and thread; over several layers of paper and fabric, which are cut away at the end, a small piece of lace taking thousands of hours. The traditional lace-makers only worked in the morning when their eyes were rested, and were often blind by the age of forty. The commentary included a lot of embroidery vocabulary, which I thought I did very well to keep up with - a lot of the terms I hadn’t even thought of in English for years, although had recently read a few in a French magazine. The dresses were beautiful and I thought alternately of them being worn by the ladies known to Proust, and by some of the earlier inhabitants of this house.
We sat and had a drink in a café opposite the Mairie in a sunny square full of flowers, and decided we would come to Alençon again. On the way home we stopped at a Champion supermarket on the outskirts of the town and stocked up; the first big shopping since our visitors had left.
Friday 8 September 2006
On Monday I decided it was finally time I went to introduce myself to the local doctor, having noted that on Monday mornings between 9 and 12 no appointments were needed. It was much like any other surgery waiting room, and I was sorry I hadn’t brought my book with me (still Sartre’s La Nausée; would have been rather suitable in the circumstances) as I waited the best part of an hour, reading lots of rubbishy magazines about « les people » (celebrities), and listening to patients with terrible coughs.
When eventually it was my turn I explained to the doctor - quiet and mild with glasses, about 40 - that I had just come to live in La Neuve-Lyre and would like him to be my « médecin traitant » (regular GP). He took my very valuable Carte Vitale and put it in his computer, immediately getting all my details, and was interested to know where I lived and where I had come from. (He said there was a very good university at Cambridge. I agreed.) He took my blood pressure, asked if I smoked, listened to my chest and prodded my tummy. I showed him the paper I had received about screening for breast cancer, and he said I just needed to make an appointment at either Verneuil or Evreux; the service was free. He asked how long it was since I’d had a blood sample taken; I said I couldn’t remember, but I didn’t like it, and he laughed. I knew that the fee for a consultation was 22 euros (a proportion of which will be refunded) so wasn’t surprised when he asked for it; unfortunately neither he nor I had much change, so he waved his hand and said « You’ll just have to owe me 2 euros. » He also said that I should have brought the correct form asking him to become « médecin traitant » ; I said I would get it from Bernay and bring it back. He handed me a folded piece of paper I assumed was a receipt or record; on looking at it at home it seemed to be list of things to get done before the next visit, including the dreaded blood sample and lots of other obscure processes. N seemed to think these all needed doing, and that French doctors often take blood samples, but I maintained he had not said anything about how to do these, only the breast screening.
When I left the surgery I went up to the end of the road and round to the further village square as I needed to go to the Post Office to collect a registered letter for N, who had given me « une pièce d’identité » as requested. As soon as I set foot over the threshold the postmistress handed me N’s letter, without waiting to see the slip or the pièce d’identité. It’s very good to be so well known; I am expecting several things in the post, so am reassured that they will be well looked after if we are out or away.
On Monday afternoon we had planned to go to Bernay anyway, so N dropped me at the Assurance Maladie office and I used my Carte Vitale to get the numbered ticket, waited till it was my turn, asked for the form and was handed one straight away, just as if I had been using this system for years! I then wondered if I needed to go back to the doctor again to give him the form and pay another 22 euros, but N said just to keep it till next time I go.
N needed to go to Monsieur Bricolage to get a piece of wood to mend the sill of the window in the salon; Monsieur P had fixed the centre piece so that it opens and closes now, but as a result of not closing properly for years the wooden bar at the bottom had rotted away. The other reason for going to Bernay was to return all the bowls and trays from our buffet to Intermarché; these had been taking up room in the dining room ever since and were mostly plastic or pseudo silver, but there was one I particularly liked; a large white china terrine with the heads of two geese curled round the top. I was thinking I would ask if I could buy it, but before I could say anything the woman behind the counter said « Don’t worry about that one; you can keep it », and stuck a sticker on it for us to take through the checkout!
We also went to the garden centre for the first time in a while, as N had to get something to get rid of the caterpillars eating his cabbages. It was obviously an important change of season; all the garden furniture was gone and there was a display of grates and fireplace accessories and a big space with boxes marked Christmas trees! All the staff seemed too busy sorting out new stock to answer any questions. We asked after the cat however and her mistress replied that she had gone to have a little rest as it was very tiring being a cat. I stocked up again on candles and paper napkins (one of the best selections of the latter that I have seen anywhere) after the visit of all our guests.
Saturday 9 September 2006
N left here for Paris on Wednesday, and is now on his way to Switzerland to spend a week playing string quartets, as he has done for the past two years. On Tuesday, by way of preparation, he went to have his hair cut - only the second time there - and came back full of long conversations he had had with his stylist (a different one from mine) and other clients about growing vegetables and making soup. He has also managed to have a conversation with our next door neighbour, while lurking in the back road trying to see into their very untidy garden. After having said he hoped we could talk about any problems face to face, he told her we were sometimes worried about the noise the dogs make; she said they made a noise every time they saw the cats, who must live somewhere the other side. This is a bit of a relief; sometimes they whined very miserably indeed.
Since Wednesday I have done a lot of cleaning, hoovering, ironing and tidying, whether post-guests or post-N or pre- the next visit I am not sure. The next visitor is daughter Caroline, due to arrive on Sunday via carefully researched train from St Lazare and bus from Evreux. On Tuesday we plan to go back to Paris taking the train from L’Aigle for the first time, and after she has gone home on Thursday I will stay at Saint-Denis until N comes back on Sunday, and we will both return here the weekend after. I think that by the time we get back here the summer will be over; temperatures change quickly at this time of year. We are already conscious of much darker evenings and mornings, and leaves are falling from the cherry tree, but think we can wait until we are both here again before trying to remember how to get to grips with our new and very expensive heating system.
On Thursday afternoon Guillaume came and fixed our new (also very expensive) shower tap. I haven’t had a chance to test the new temperatures yet, but hope to do so tomorrow before Caroline arrives. He checked the downstairs loo, which seems finally to be free from leaks, and we talked about the melons ripening on the verandah table. (He said melon jam was very good, which was encouraging; I have since made some over two days, from a recipe in the little book N got from the fair at Bernay; melon and lemon. It seems rather hard and green.) As I let Guillaume out of the garage I mentioned the nibblings in the rubbish sack which seem to have started again; he grinned and said perhaps it was « un rat » (I liked that better than « des rats ») and that in theory you could get poison from the Mairie. When I mentioned this on the phone to N he said I should go and ask for some, but later I realised I would sound just like Emma Bovary when she went to get poison from the pharmacie to commit suicide. Think I will wait till N is here.
(The reason the nibbling stopped temporarily; I am sure, is because we had the largest and smelliest collection of rubbish ever. As I think I said before, rubbish is collected erratically twice a month, with sometimes as much as five weeks in between collections, and it has to sit in plastic sacks in the garage all this time. Because of the house party our latest collection contained extremely old meat and cheese, plus all Charlotte’s disposable nappies! When I finally put it all out last Tuesday one bag was a mass of maggots, which made me feel quite ill all the rest of the afternoon. The nibbling rats too, probably.)
Yesterday - Friday - I went to L’Aigle on the bus, the first time since I had been abandoned there and N had come to fetch me. I am please to report that all is well now with the bus route, and that all the road works have finished and everything is back to normal. One of the reasons for going was to enquire whether there were left luggage facilities at L’Aigle station so that C and I could leave our bags there and visit the market next Tuesday, but there aren’t so I think it will be simpler to go straight on to Paris. It was strange being in L’Aigle on a non-market day, very quiet. The other reason was the collection of my sampler from the very nice people at the embroidery and sewing shop; I feel now that all the curtains are done (and being prompted by my lace making experiences) I must start some embroidery again. I had a drink at the usual café, also very quiet; asked in a book shop for the life of Georges Sand but they didn’t have it, so I bought a house magazine instead.
This morning I went to the hairdresser; they are still talking about N’s soup recipes and vegetable garden. I suggested to him on the phone that I take the garden photo album to show the hairdressers; he thought this was a good idea as he wasn’t sure if it was the done thing for him to invite unchaperoned ladies to his garden.
Sunday 10 September
Yesterday and today I have caught up with washing, correspondence, melon jam, flowers from the garden - pink roses and beautiful golden dahlias - in between watering plants and having lunch in the garden - very windy yesterday but very hot today. Hope this lasts for Caroline’s visit! Yesterday I received Monsieur A’s very large bill; for the end of the electrical work by Emanuel in July, his mending the bathroom light, and all the work done by Guillaume on the upstairs shower and downstairs loo. This surely must be the last bill; although I have a feeling I’ve said that before.
At this time of year I always find myself thinking « this is where I came in », even more so now as it will soon be a year since I came to live in France. On both occasions when I lived here before I arrived end September/beginning October at the start of the academic year, and in the years in between have often found myself starting something new in September, sometimes living in a new place too. I have always loved the French concept of the « Rentrée », so much more than « Back to School » in English, as so many people here go away to the country or the sea for the whole of the summer, so many activities and businesses stop for the whole of August, that with the rentrée you feel everything is starting up again.
It’s just as well, as after our house party for which we had been making plans for months, for as long as we have had this house and even before, we need something new to turn our ideas to! The garden produce continues to keep us busy; all the potatoes have be lifted and are in either the first outhouse or the wine cellar, the onions are all hanging to dry, we have had some of the first parsnips and are still enjoying lettuces, turnips, carrots and beans. N has even bought new plants for next spring, salads and cauliflowers. The most obvious crop at the moment is the apples, smallish and red, we don’t know what kind they are, or even what they are intended for (a useful picture chart at the garden centre divides apples into four categories: eating, cooking, cider and juice; we think we’ll have to take one of ours along to compare, or perhaps ask somebody there.) There are lots of windfalls, some too small to do anything with, but we have made mint jelly in the new copper jam pan, and enjoyed it with lamb chops from the local boucherie. (It took a long time to find a place to hang the jelly bag, bought on our trip to Worcester, but I eventually saw where we could hang a pole over the bench in the potting shed.) I have also made apple sauce for the freezer and apple purée for dessert.
We finally had word from Odile, our expected guest in early August. She maintained that as she had had no news from us, and no phone number (neither of which was the case!) she didn’t call in. It is now getting very near her second planned visit, complete with friend. Watch this space.
At the end of last week we decided it was time for another outing. I seemed to be spending all my time washing and ironing after the guests had left, and N painting shutters in the outhouse, and we felt like a day off. The forecast was very good for Friday so we decided to go to Alençon for the day, partly as we live in the rue d’Alençon (although the road doesn’t go there; we don’t know what the connection is.)
I looked at the website for the town of Alençon the day before, found many interesting things and also a link with details of a new motorway going down the west of France from Bordeaux to Rouen and up to the coast, which N wanted to investigate. We had heard about this from the English couple we met at the Bovary lunch, who claimed after 15 years of taking 3 or 4 hours to get to Calais, they now did it in just over two, joining this new motorway just north of Bernay. N also thought this might be why Dan got lost and ended up at Broglie on the way here, if the AA had sent him details of the brand new route.
It was fascinating travelling along a new road - not much traffic! - and even more interesting seeing a brand newly built service station, where we stopped to have a look and do some shopping, which got very hot in the car during the rest of the day. It was lunchtime when we arrived and the tourist office was closed, so no map; we found our own way round. Alençon is a very pretty historic town with an interesting variety of old buildings and car-free centre. We found a restaurant to have lunch, part of a chain but very good; I had excellent salmon, and N duck. I had seen from the website that there was a lace-making tradition, and an exhibition - called Froufrous - of lace dresses dating from between 1865 and 1905; and we came upon the museum by accident, there was also an exhibit of medieval bestiaries next door. I went to the dresses and N to the bestiaries, and we agreed to meet an hour later. As soon as I had got my ticket I was told that the « dentellière » (lace-maker) was about to give her demonstration, so hurried along and joined four or five other ladies round a table. (It felt very like being at the WI) We were told that Alençon lace is the only lace made entirely with needle and thread; over several layers of paper and fabric, which are cut away at the end, a small piece of lace taking thousands of hours. The traditional lace-makers only worked in the morning when their eyes were rested, and were often blind by the age of forty. The commentary included a lot of embroidery vocabulary, which I thought I did very well to keep up with - a lot of the terms I hadn’t even thought of in English for years, although had recently read a few in a French magazine. The dresses were beautiful and I thought alternately of them being worn by the ladies known to Proust, and by some of the earlier inhabitants of this house.
We sat and had a drink in a café opposite the Mairie in a sunny square full of flowers, and decided we would come to Alençon again. On the way home we stopped at a Champion supermarket on the outskirts of the town and stocked up; the first big shopping since our visitors had left.
Friday 8 September 2006
On Monday I decided it was finally time I went to introduce myself to the local doctor, having noted that on Monday mornings between 9 and 12 no appointments were needed. It was much like any other surgery waiting room, and I was sorry I hadn’t brought my book with me (still Sartre’s La Nausée; would have been rather suitable in the circumstances) as I waited the best part of an hour, reading lots of rubbishy magazines about « les people » (celebrities), and listening to patients with terrible coughs.
When eventually it was my turn I explained to the doctor - quiet and mild with glasses, about 40 - that I had just come to live in La Neuve-Lyre and would like him to be my « médecin traitant » (regular GP). He took my very valuable Carte Vitale and put it in his computer, immediately getting all my details, and was interested to know where I lived and where I had come from. (He said there was a very good university at Cambridge. I agreed.) He took my blood pressure, asked if I smoked, listened to my chest and prodded my tummy. I showed him the paper I had received about screening for breast cancer, and he said I just needed to make an appointment at either Verneuil or Evreux; the service was free. He asked how long it was since I’d had a blood sample taken; I said I couldn’t remember, but I didn’t like it, and he laughed. I knew that the fee for a consultation was 22 euros (a proportion of which will be refunded) so wasn’t surprised when he asked for it; unfortunately neither he nor I had much change, so he waved his hand and said « You’ll just have to owe me 2 euros. » He also said that I should have brought the correct form asking him to become « médecin traitant » ; I said I would get it from Bernay and bring it back. He handed me a folded piece of paper I assumed was a receipt or record; on looking at it at home it seemed to be list of things to get done before the next visit, including the dreaded blood sample and lots of other obscure processes. N seemed to think these all needed doing, and that French doctors often take blood samples, but I maintained he had not said anything about how to do these, only the breast screening.
When I left the surgery I went up to the end of the road and round to the further village square as I needed to go to the Post Office to collect a registered letter for N, who had given me « une pièce d’identité » as requested. As soon as I set foot over the threshold the postmistress handed me N’s letter, without waiting to see the slip or the pièce d’identité. It’s very good to be so well known; I am expecting several things in the post, so am reassured that they will be well looked after if we are out or away.
On Monday afternoon we had planned to go to Bernay anyway, so N dropped me at the Assurance Maladie office and I used my Carte Vitale to get the numbered ticket, waited till it was my turn, asked for the form and was handed one straight away, just as if I had been using this system for years! I then wondered if I needed to go back to the doctor again to give him the form and pay another 22 euros, but N said just to keep it till next time I go.
N needed to go to Monsieur Bricolage to get a piece of wood to mend the sill of the window in the salon; Monsieur P had fixed the centre piece so that it opens and closes now, but as a result of not closing properly for years the wooden bar at the bottom had rotted away. The other reason for going to Bernay was to return all the bowls and trays from our buffet to Intermarché; these had been taking up room in the dining room ever since and were mostly plastic or pseudo silver, but there was one I particularly liked; a large white china terrine with the heads of two geese curled round the top. I was thinking I would ask if I could buy it, but before I could say anything the woman behind the counter said « Don’t worry about that one; you can keep it », and stuck a sticker on it for us to take through the checkout!
We also went to the garden centre for the first time in a while, as N had to get something to get rid of the caterpillars eating his cabbages. It was obviously an important change of season; all the garden furniture was gone and there was a display of grates and fireplace accessories and a big space with boxes marked Christmas trees! All the staff seemed too busy sorting out new stock to answer any questions. We asked after the cat however and her mistress replied that she had gone to have a little rest as it was very tiring being a cat. I stocked up again on candles and paper napkins (one of the best selections of the latter that I have seen anywhere) after the visit of all our guests.
Saturday 9 September 2006
N left here for Paris on Wednesday, and is now on his way to Switzerland to spend a week playing string quartets, as he has done for the past two years. On Tuesday, by way of preparation, he went to have his hair cut - only the second time there - and came back full of long conversations he had had with his stylist (a different one from mine) and other clients about growing vegetables and making soup. He has also managed to have a conversation with our next door neighbour, while lurking in the back road trying to see into their very untidy garden. After having said he hoped we could talk about any problems face to face, he told her we were sometimes worried about the noise the dogs make; she said they made a noise every time they saw the cats, who must live somewhere the other side. This is a bit of a relief; sometimes they whined very miserably indeed.
Since Wednesday I have done a lot of cleaning, hoovering, ironing and tidying, whether post-guests or post-N or pre- the next visit I am not sure. The next visitor is daughter Caroline, due to arrive on Sunday via carefully researched train from St Lazare and bus from Evreux. On Tuesday we plan to go back to Paris taking the train from L’Aigle for the first time, and after she has gone home on Thursday I will stay at Saint-Denis until N comes back on Sunday, and we will both return here the weekend after. I think that by the time we get back here the summer will be over; temperatures change quickly at this time of year. We are already conscious of much darker evenings and mornings, and leaves are falling from the cherry tree, but think we can wait until we are both here again before trying to remember how to get to grips with our new and very expensive heating system.
On Thursday afternoon Guillaume came and fixed our new (also very expensive) shower tap. I haven’t had a chance to test the new temperatures yet, but hope to do so tomorrow before Caroline arrives. He checked the downstairs loo, which seems finally to be free from leaks, and we talked about the melons ripening on the verandah table. (He said melon jam was very good, which was encouraging; I have since made some over two days, from a recipe in the little book N got from the fair at Bernay; melon and lemon. It seems rather hard and green.) As I let Guillaume out of the garage I mentioned the nibblings in the rubbish sack which seem to have started again; he grinned and said perhaps it was « un rat » (I liked that better than « des rats ») and that in theory you could get poison from the Mairie. When I mentioned this on the phone to N he said I should go and ask for some, but later I realised I would sound just like Emma Bovary when she went to get poison from the pharmacie to commit suicide. Think I will wait till N is here.
(The reason the nibbling stopped temporarily; I am sure, is because we had the largest and smelliest collection of rubbish ever. As I think I said before, rubbish is collected erratically twice a month, with sometimes as much as five weeks in between collections, and it has to sit in plastic sacks in the garage all this time. Because of the house party our latest collection contained extremely old meat and cheese, plus all Charlotte’s disposable nappies! When I finally put it all out last Tuesday one bag was a mass of maggots, which made me feel quite ill all the rest of the afternoon. The nibbling rats too, probably.)
Yesterday - Friday - I went to L’Aigle on the bus, the first time since I had been abandoned there and N had come to fetch me. I am please to report that all is well now with the bus route, and that all the road works have finished and everything is back to normal. One of the reasons for going was to enquire whether there were left luggage facilities at L’Aigle station so that C and I could leave our bags there and visit the market next Tuesday, but there aren’t so I think it will be simpler to go straight on to Paris. It was strange being in L’Aigle on a non-market day, very quiet. The other reason was the collection of my sampler from the very nice people at the embroidery and sewing shop; I feel now that all the curtains are done (and being prompted by my lace making experiences) I must start some embroidery again. I had a drink at the usual café, also very quiet; asked in a book shop for the life of Georges Sand but they didn’t have it, so I bought a house magazine instead.
This morning I went to the hairdresser; they are still talking about N’s soup recipes and vegetable garden. I suggested to him on the phone that I take the garden photo album to show the hairdressers; he thought this was a good idea as he wasn’t sure if it was the done thing for him to invite unchaperoned ladies to his garden.
Sunday 10 September
Yesterday and today I have caught up with washing, correspondence, melon jam, flowers from the garden - pink roses and beautiful golden dahlias - in between watering plants and having lunch in the garden - very windy yesterday but very hot today. Hope this lasts for Caroline’s visit! Yesterday I received Monsieur A’s very large bill; for the end of the electrical work by Emanuel in July, his mending the bathroom light, and all the work done by Guillaume on the upstairs shower and downstairs loo. This surely must be the last bill; although I have a feeling I’ve said that before.
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 4:57 AM 
