Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Monday 16 October 2006
We had a beautiful drive back to Paris last Tuesday; lovely sunshine and trees and fields all looking beautiful in their autumn colours. Apart from playing quartets, N also managed to get the car serviced and almost got himself serviced - ‘flu vaccine from the pharmacie - but the doctor was away to that will have to wait for next time. I got some shoes repaired (a lengthy process at LNL) and visited the new branch of Tati recently opened in Saint-Denis, and bought a skirt for 11 euros 99 (about £7!) I received my local cinema membership ticket, but there was nothing worth seeing at the right times during this visit.
I did however go to the Chorale on Thursday evening, the first time I have seen them all since the end of May. After the usual voice exercises we sang a very catchy African song that they had learned before; Marie-Christine who seemed pleased to see me and sat down next to me, said she thought it was Swahili. I couldn’t believe that after half an hour I was singing it as though I had known it for ever! Most of the other pieces we sang (and maybe that one too - who knows?) were Christmas songs, some of them old regional French carols, and were very beautiful, including the German carol from last year. I recognised « O little town of Bethlehem » in the pile of music, and looked forward to singing something familiar, but it was a completely unknown tune. After singing it through couple of times, and hearing a variety of pronunciations, our chef (who up to then had given no sign of noticing I was there) asked if I would read the words out loud so that they could all see what they were aiming at. This I did very loudly, slowly and clearly, after which there was much gasping in amazement, laughter and applause, especially from some new members who hadn’t seen me before. The chef gave them a brief explanation of what the words meant; think I shall make a translation and take it along next time, which will be in a fortnight. In answer to my questions Marie-Christine said that only the one concert was planned before Christmas, and that the date hadn’t been fixed yet. As we left she said she had to hurry home and practise a violin part for an orchestra rehearsal; I hadn’t known she was a string player and told her N played the viola; she said viola players were always hard to find. All this was particularly relevant as N had just received a list of musicians in the Paris area looking for other musicians - almost like a dating agency - all saying what they were looking for and what they could offer, where they lived and - most interestingly - their dates of birth.
The most constructive thing achieved during the visit was the re-stuffing of the sofa cushions. This sofa was bought from Heal’s in London almost twenty years ago, and had lived all its life in Cambridge before going into store with Abels and then coming to Normandy, so the cushion covers must have been a bit surprised to find themselves travelling on the Paris metro in a carrier bag. I phoned the workshop on Wednesday morning and learned that if I took them in that afternoon we could fetch them on Friday. This meant that we left the apartment after an early lunch (now having to walk with all our luggage to the municipal car park in Saint-Denis) and drove to the rue Faubourg Saint-Antoine near Bastille, and parked in a little yard a few doors down. N stayed with the car while I went to fetch the cushions, which were looking huge and fat and marvellous, and much cleaner! And difficult to have got home on the metro. There then followed a long and exciting drive right though the centre of Paris and out to the west in the direction of Normandy; part of the time to the accompaniment of the final movement of Beethoven’s choral symphony on the radio. In all we must have been in the car between four and five hours, and only just got back to La Neuve-Lyre in time for my 5.30 hair appointment. Fortunately I remembered I was going to take along photos of the garden to show the hairdresser as almost straight away she asked if I had brought them. Once the hair had been cut (a little shorter than usual) both stylists had a good look at the photos, and seemed very interested and knowledgeable about gardens.
Home again, I enjoyed putting the newly stuffed cushions on the sofa - the difference is amazing; sofa about four inches higher - and enjoyed less putting the old saggy feather cushions in dustbin bags in the garage; happily our night-time raiders are smart enough to realise there is nothing to eat inside and have not bitten through them. N is so impressed with the new cushions that he is thinking of having the Saint-Denis ones stuffed too, so we may be returning to the rue Faubourg Saint-Antoine a few more times yet.
While still at Saint-Denis N took a phone call from the Palmers to say that they wouldn’t be able to come for the weekend after all; not a complete surprise as there had been a possibility of a meeting being rescheduled. He sent an e-mail to Odile (as she had been coming in order to meet them) and she replied that she would cancel too, as she had family coming. The other event we had been trying to arrange - a lunch party at Saint-Denis at the end of the month for the same group of Emeritus Professors we had lunch with at the Sorbonne in June - was going equally badly; almost all refusals. We are beginning to wonder what is wrong with our hospitality skills! Fortunately, N says, we are doing better in Barcelona; a colleague he emailed to see if she would like to meet us for lunch replied immediately saying she would be delighted.
So this meant that we had a large amount of bean stew in the freezer, both spare room beds made up and no guests, but more importantly, that we were now able go to the concert in the village church on Saturday evening. It was a little like the concert I took part in last October with the Saint-Denis chorale, in fact two of the pieces were the same, but there were also several solo items. The singers were all pupils of a local Austrian singing teacher who had moved into the village in 2005 (like us!) whom the Deputy Mayor had mentioned when he had visited us in the summer. He came over to speak to us as we took our seats, said he remembered that I sang, and that he would put me in contact with her, but nothing has happened so far. It was interesting sitting inside the church; the pews had little doors on them with bolts on the inside, and we sat behind our neighbour Annick, but there was no-one else I recognised. There were two English items on the programme (both by Purcell) with a few strange pronunciations, and it occurred to me that I might be of use to them too. The Austrian teacher sometimes spends time away in Paris as we do, so there wouldn’t be a question of missing regular rehearsals, and as N said, if it meant taking singing lessons, that might be quite interesting too. I have since met the Deputy Mayor in the village, and he has shaken my hand and asked me how I was, but as he was with someone else I didn’t raise the question of contact. I shall do so next time. (I am also on « bonjour » terms with the blacksmith, the lady from the traiteur and the hairdresser, as well as neighbours, so think I am making progress.) On the way home from the concert - at about 8 o’clock - there were no street lights at all at our end of the street; we had noticed this from inside before, and it made getting home very difficult, we wished we had left on the light over the front door. Am pleased to report they have now been fixed. It was only the second time we have been out after dark here, the first was the Chopin evening; and this was the first evening we have left by the front door instead of via the garage.
With no weekend guests and no shutter deadlines to meet we felt strangely relaxed, and on Sunday finally got round to having a look at the blinds bought on the previous visit to Paris, which had just been sitting waiting in the verandah. The fabric concertina blind - for the door from the back hall to the verandah - was easily fixed and works very well apart from needing a hook to wind the spare cord. The roller blind for the window over the kitchen sink completely foxed us though, and seemed quite unlike other roller blinds I have bought from John Lewis in the past and had no trouble at all fixing. After wasting much of the afternoon, N suggested the only thing to do was to take it back to Leroy Merlin when next in Paris and tell them it was faulty. I would be happier about this if I still had the receipt. Watch this space.
Thursday 19 October 2006
On Monday afternoon it was sunny and we spent quite a while working in the garden; N mowed the lawns for what we hope is the last time this year, and I watered plants and decided not to plant the four red cyclamen I’d got at the local market that morning as the busy lizzies in the urns weren’t quite over yet. We also picked what apples we could reach from the tree, and put them on the table in the verandah. I also reflected that it was a year since we’d visited the house for only the second time, and taken pictures; it had been misty then sunny that day too, and the virginia creeper on the front railing red in the photos.
The two things I had been planning to do once the weekend guests had left were making the apple chutney and taking my bicycle to the local shop and finding out why the pump was not working. (I had been on the point of doing the latter a couple of weeks ago, when suddenly required to start putting masking tape round all the upstairs windows.) I had been slowly amassing the ingredients for the chutney and needed crystallized ginger again, as for the marrow jam, which meant a trip on the bus to L’Aigle market on Tuesday morning. I took the opportunity of visiting the charity shop too, as while putting away summer clothes found several things I could happily give away. This time I had a good look round inside - there was an English couple buying a coat! - and bought some almost new vintage Tupperware from the 1970’s, it’s amazing what you can find. The staff seemed very keen when I said I could bring in some clothes. Have to work out the best way to do this. Apart from the ginger, and other crystallized fruits, I bought some of the excellent smoked haddock we had before, some local mushrooms, ham, bouchées à la reine (large vol au vents) and knickers. The market was changing with the season - chestnuts which made me think of our trip to Italy this time last year, and stalls selling woolly scarves and gloves.
After lunch I took my bicycle and the pump round to the shop next to the supermarket and explained the problem as best I could with fairly limited bicycle vocabulary and the lady said she would have a look at it, and I should come back the next day. I said I missed seeing her tabby cat asleep in the shop window; she said she had two of them, but they changed their sleeping places often. (She also has a cage of canaries in the shop, and at least one dog barking at the back……)
The apple chutney was a great success. Apart from the seven pounds of apples and the crystallized ginger it contained garlic, cider vinegar, sultanas and lots of dark brown sugar. I had no idea how long it would take, but it wasn’t finished until nearly dinner time, and filled about twelve pots of varying sizes. We have already sampled it several times!
Back at the bicycle shop the next day, it transpired that both my tyres were very perished and needed replacing, it wasn’t surprising that they failed to pump up, she said. I wondered if it was as a result of being in store. Anyway, she suggested new tyres; which needed ordering as they weren’t a regular size (!) and it was agreed that I should go back again on Friday, she hoped that would be all right. (A change from Cambridge, where one is lucky to find someone with time to do any bicycle repairs at all.) I asked whether I could bring the child’s bicycle that was left in the garage and which N thought we ought to have fixed in case Charlotte wanted to use it when she next came, and the bicycle lady said yes, bring it along.
Monday 23 October 2006
Have since been back to the cycle shop one more time; no luck with tyres as they are very unusual size, but after trying two dealers with no luck, she was trying a third. Will check again tomorrow. I left the little bike which she said should be no problem. And the birds in the shop are not canaries, they are small grey and yellow parrots.
Since finishing the painting of the shutters N has spent much of his time working on the Lexique (his French/English dictionary of house buying terms that we are revising for re-publication.) This is easier now that he has his own computer in the attic study, and we are no longer sharing the one in my ground floor room. All the French/English and English/French terms have now been typed, together with an ever-increasing list of abbreviations, and lists of French départements and motorways. We have now begun checking whether other words/expressions found in recent publications are included; mostly they are, which is good. While at the computer we have also printed and sent a lunch/dinner invitation to Monsieur and Madame P, for mid-November.
On Friday afternoon we visited a permanent Antique and Brocante warehouse between Verneuil and L‘Aigle, which we have seen advertised many times in « Maisons Normandes ». As well as a barn full of rather scruffy bits and pieces and lots of outdoor stuff - garden chairs and tables, concrete urns, gates, statues and so on - there was a large showroom on two floors crammed full of furniture, china, pictures, mirrors, glasses, lamps, and several pieces which seemed to have come from shops or restaurants rather than houses. It took long time to see everything; N was looking at small cupboards which would fit in the dining room at Saint-Denis in the gap left by the Italian trolley. There were one or two beautiful gilt mirrors much cheaper than the one over our fireplace here that he bought in Paris at the Flea Market, and we began to wonder if Normandy prices were on the whole cheaper than Paris. In the end he came away with a small key cupboard (which he later decided was cracked and warped) and I bought a wonderful bell to hang in the hall to summon him to meals - surmounted by a Norman cow - and a brown glazed vase, like the cream one I bought new for the bedroom flowers, but at a third of the price.
Yesterday and today we have at last had a visitor; Bill, a former colleague from Cambridge arrived yesterday afternoon and left after lunch today, on his way up from the south to catch the boat at Le Havre. It was a good excuse to light our first fire of the season, and the house was filled with the smell of wood smoke, sometimes a bit too much. We couldn’t feed him up as much as we would have liked, as he was on a strict diet (no Norman cream, apple cake, wine or Camembert) but fortunately he was very partial to apple compôte, bean stew and leek & potato soup. We enjoyed giving him a tour of the house and grounds, and this morning a little trip round the village and market.
Tomorrow we will be leaving Normandy for about two weeks; back to Saint-Denis for N to attend a colloquium, the lunch for Emeritus Professors (of which there may well be only one) the Chorale, a quick visit from Claire, Dan and Catherine L, and then our three-day trip to Barcelona.
We had a beautiful drive back to Paris last Tuesday; lovely sunshine and trees and fields all looking beautiful in their autumn colours. Apart from playing quartets, N also managed to get the car serviced and almost got himself serviced - ‘flu vaccine from the pharmacie - but the doctor was away to that will have to wait for next time. I got some shoes repaired (a lengthy process at LNL) and visited the new branch of Tati recently opened in Saint-Denis, and bought a skirt for 11 euros 99 (about £7!) I received my local cinema membership ticket, but there was nothing worth seeing at the right times during this visit.
I did however go to the Chorale on Thursday evening, the first time I have seen them all since the end of May. After the usual voice exercises we sang a very catchy African song that they had learned before; Marie-Christine who seemed pleased to see me and sat down next to me, said she thought it was Swahili. I couldn’t believe that after half an hour I was singing it as though I had known it for ever! Most of the other pieces we sang (and maybe that one too - who knows?) were Christmas songs, some of them old regional French carols, and were very beautiful, including the German carol from last year. I recognised « O little town of Bethlehem » in the pile of music, and looked forward to singing something familiar, but it was a completely unknown tune. After singing it through couple of times, and hearing a variety of pronunciations, our chef (who up to then had given no sign of noticing I was there) asked if I would read the words out loud so that they could all see what they were aiming at. This I did very loudly, slowly and clearly, after which there was much gasping in amazement, laughter and applause, especially from some new members who hadn’t seen me before. The chef gave them a brief explanation of what the words meant; think I shall make a translation and take it along next time, which will be in a fortnight. In answer to my questions Marie-Christine said that only the one concert was planned before Christmas, and that the date hadn’t been fixed yet. As we left she said she had to hurry home and practise a violin part for an orchestra rehearsal; I hadn’t known she was a string player and told her N played the viola; she said viola players were always hard to find. All this was particularly relevant as N had just received a list of musicians in the Paris area looking for other musicians - almost like a dating agency - all saying what they were looking for and what they could offer, where they lived and - most interestingly - their dates of birth.
The most constructive thing achieved during the visit was the re-stuffing of the sofa cushions. This sofa was bought from Heal’s in London almost twenty years ago, and had lived all its life in Cambridge before going into store with Abels and then coming to Normandy, so the cushion covers must have been a bit surprised to find themselves travelling on the Paris metro in a carrier bag. I phoned the workshop on Wednesday morning and learned that if I took them in that afternoon we could fetch them on Friday. This meant that we left the apartment after an early lunch (now having to walk with all our luggage to the municipal car park in Saint-Denis) and drove to the rue Faubourg Saint-Antoine near Bastille, and parked in a little yard a few doors down. N stayed with the car while I went to fetch the cushions, which were looking huge and fat and marvellous, and much cleaner! And difficult to have got home on the metro. There then followed a long and exciting drive right though the centre of Paris and out to the west in the direction of Normandy; part of the time to the accompaniment of the final movement of Beethoven’s choral symphony on the radio. In all we must have been in the car between four and five hours, and only just got back to La Neuve-Lyre in time for my 5.30 hair appointment. Fortunately I remembered I was going to take along photos of the garden to show the hairdresser as almost straight away she asked if I had brought them. Once the hair had been cut (a little shorter than usual) both stylists had a good look at the photos, and seemed very interested and knowledgeable about gardens.
Home again, I enjoyed putting the newly stuffed cushions on the sofa - the difference is amazing; sofa about four inches higher - and enjoyed less putting the old saggy feather cushions in dustbin bags in the garage; happily our night-time raiders are smart enough to realise there is nothing to eat inside and have not bitten through them. N is so impressed with the new cushions that he is thinking of having the Saint-Denis ones stuffed too, so we may be returning to the rue Faubourg Saint-Antoine a few more times yet.
While still at Saint-Denis N took a phone call from the Palmers to say that they wouldn’t be able to come for the weekend after all; not a complete surprise as there had been a possibility of a meeting being rescheduled. He sent an e-mail to Odile (as she had been coming in order to meet them) and she replied that she would cancel too, as she had family coming. The other event we had been trying to arrange - a lunch party at Saint-Denis at the end of the month for the same group of Emeritus Professors we had lunch with at the Sorbonne in June - was going equally badly; almost all refusals. We are beginning to wonder what is wrong with our hospitality skills! Fortunately, N says, we are doing better in Barcelona; a colleague he emailed to see if she would like to meet us for lunch replied immediately saying she would be delighted.
So this meant that we had a large amount of bean stew in the freezer, both spare room beds made up and no guests, but more importantly, that we were now able go to the concert in the village church on Saturday evening. It was a little like the concert I took part in last October with the Saint-Denis chorale, in fact two of the pieces were the same, but there were also several solo items. The singers were all pupils of a local Austrian singing teacher who had moved into the village in 2005 (like us!) whom the Deputy Mayor had mentioned when he had visited us in the summer. He came over to speak to us as we took our seats, said he remembered that I sang, and that he would put me in contact with her, but nothing has happened so far. It was interesting sitting inside the church; the pews had little doors on them with bolts on the inside, and we sat behind our neighbour Annick, but there was no-one else I recognised. There were two English items on the programme (both by Purcell) with a few strange pronunciations, and it occurred to me that I might be of use to them too. The Austrian teacher sometimes spends time away in Paris as we do, so there wouldn’t be a question of missing regular rehearsals, and as N said, if it meant taking singing lessons, that might be quite interesting too. I have since met the Deputy Mayor in the village, and he has shaken my hand and asked me how I was, but as he was with someone else I didn’t raise the question of contact. I shall do so next time. (I am also on « bonjour » terms with the blacksmith, the lady from the traiteur and the hairdresser, as well as neighbours, so think I am making progress.) On the way home from the concert - at about 8 o’clock - there were no street lights at all at our end of the street; we had noticed this from inside before, and it made getting home very difficult, we wished we had left on the light over the front door. Am pleased to report they have now been fixed. It was only the second time we have been out after dark here, the first was the Chopin evening; and this was the first evening we have left by the front door instead of via the garage.
With no weekend guests and no shutter deadlines to meet we felt strangely relaxed, and on Sunday finally got round to having a look at the blinds bought on the previous visit to Paris, which had just been sitting waiting in the verandah. The fabric concertina blind - for the door from the back hall to the verandah - was easily fixed and works very well apart from needing a hook to wind the spare cord. The roller blind for the window over the kitchen sink completely foxed us though, and seemed quite unlike other roller blinds I have bought from John Lewis in the past and had no trouble at all fixing. After wasting much of the afternoon, N suggested the only thing to do was to take it back to Leroy Merlin when next in Paris and tell them it was faulty. I would be happier about this if I still had the receipt. Watch this space.
Thursday 19 October 2006
On Monday afternoon it was sunny and we spent quite a while working in the garden; N mowed the lawns for what we hope is the last time this year, and I watered plants and decided not to plant the four red cyclamen I’d got at the local market that morning as the busy lizzies in the urns weren’t quite over yet. We also picked what apples we could reach from the tree, and put them on the table in the verandah. I also reflected that it was a year since we’d visited the house for only the second time, and taken pictures; it had been misty then sunny that day too, and the virginia creeper on the front railing red in the photos.
The two things I had been planning to do once the weekend guests had left were making the apple chutney and taking my bicycle to the local shop and finding out why the pump was not working. (I had been on the point of doing the latter a couple of weeks ago, when suddenly required to start putting masking tape round all the upstairs windows.) I had been slowly amassing the ingredients for the chutney and needed crystallized ginger again, as for the marrow jam, which meant a trip on the bus to L’Aigle market on Tuesday morning. I took the opportunity of visiting the charity shop too, as while putting away summer clothes found several things I could happily give away. This time I had a good look round inside - there was an English couple buying a coat! - and bought some almost new vintage Tupperware from the 1970’s, it’s amazing what you can find. The staff seemed very keen when I said I could bring in some clothes. Have to work out the best way to do this. Apart from the ginger, and other crystallized fruits, I bought some of the excellent smoked haddock we had before, some local mushrooms, ham, bouchées à la reine (large vol au vents) and knickers. The market was changing with the season - chestnuts which made me think of our trip to Italy this time last year, and stalls selling woolly scarves and gloves.
After lunch I took my bicycle and the pump round to the shop next to the supermarket and explained the problem as best I could with fairly limited bicycle vocabulary and the lady said she would have a look at it, and I should come back the next day. I said I missed seeing her tabby cat asleep in the shop window; she said she had two of them, but they changed their sleeping places often. (She also has a cage of canaries in the shop, and at least one dog barking at the back……)
The apple chutney was a great success. Apart from the seven pounds of apples and the crystallized ginger it contained garlic, cider vinegar, sultanas and lots of dark brown sugar. I had no idea how long it would take, but it wasn’t finished until nearly dinner time, and filled about twelve pots of varying sizes. We have already sampled it several times!
Back at the bicycle shop the next day, it transpired that both my tyres were very perished and needed replacing, it wasn’t surprising that they failed to pump up, she said. I wondered if it was as a result of being in store. Anyway, she suggested new tyres; which needed ordering as they weren’t a regular size (!) and it was agreed that I should go back again on Friday, she hoped that would be all right. (A change from Cambridge, where one is lucky to find someone with time to do any bicycle repairs at all.) I asked whether I could bring the child’s bicycle that was left in the garage and which N thought we ought to have fixed in case Charlotte wanted to use it when she next came, and the bicycle lady said yes, bring it along.
Monday 23 October 2006
Have since been back to the cycle shop one more time; no luck with tyres as they are very unusual size, but after trying two dealers with no luck, she was trying a third. Will check again tomorrow. I left the little bike which she said should be no problem. And the birds in the shop are not canaries, they are small grey and yellow parrots.
Since finishing the painting of the shutters N has spent much of his time working on the Lexique (his French/English dictionary of house buying terms that we are revising for re-publication.) This is easier now that he has his own computer in the attic study, and we are no longer sharing the one in my ground floor room. All the French/English and English/French terms have now been typed, together with an ever-increasing list of abbreviations, and lists of French départements and motorways. We have now begun checking whether other words/expressions found in recent publications are included; mostly they are, which is good. While at the computer we have also printed and sent a lunch/dinner invitation to Monsieur and Madame P, for mid-November.
On Friday afternoon we visited a permanent Antique and Brocante warehouse between Verneuil and L‘Aigle, which we have seen advertised many times in « Maisons Normandes ». As well as a barn full of rather scruffy bits and pieces and lots of outdoor stuff - garden chairs and tables, concrete urns, gates, statues and so on - there was a large showroom on two floors crammed full of furniture, china, pictures, mirrors, glasses, lamps, and several pieces which seemed to have come from shops or restaurants rather than houses. It took long time to see everything; N was looking at small cupboards which would fit in the dining room at Saint-Denis in the gap left by the Italian trolley. There were one or two beautiful gilt mirrors much cheaper than the one over our fireplace here that he bought in Paris at the Flea Market, and we began to wonder if Normandy prices were on the whole cheaper than Paris. In the end he came away with a small key cupboard (which he later decided was cracked and warped) and I bought a wonderful bell to hang in the hall to summon him to meals - surmounted by a Norman cow - and a brown glazed vase, like the cream one I bought new for the bedroom flowers, but at a third of the price.
Yesterday and today we have at last had a visitor; Bill, a former colleague from Cambridge arrived yesterday afternoon and left after lunch today, on his way up from the south to catch the boat at Le Havre. It was a good excuse to light our first fire of the season, and the house was filled with the smell of wood smoke, sometimes a bit too much. We couldn’t feed him up as much as we would have liked, as he was on a strict diet (no Norman cream, apple cake, wine or Camembert) but fortunately he was very partial to apple compôte, bean stew and leek & potato soup. We enjoyed giving him a tour of the house and grounds, and this morning a little trip round the village and market.
Tomorrow we will be leaving Normandy for about two weeks; back to Saint-Denis for N to attend a colloquium, the lunch for Emeritus Professors (of which there may well be only one) the Chorale, a quick visit from Claire, Dan and Catherine L, and then our three-day trip to Barcelona.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Thursday 28 September 2006
We have been back in Normandy six days now, and only yesterday did I feel I had got to grips with all the apples in the garden! So many had fallen while we were away, and on Saturday morning I picked them all up, and put the worst straight into the compost bin. The rest I laid out on the garden table, where they filled an area of about a square metre. Several afternoons this week I have sat the table peeling and cutting them in the pale autumn sunshine, thinking this is what having a Normandy house and garden is all about. I have frozen several lots in chunks, some as compôte, and am on the second batch of apple jelly.
Friday 29 September 2006
Second batch of apple jelly a great success; darker and more flavour than the first, perhaps the apples were riper? I must now turn my attention to marrow and ginger jam, (and then Christmas puddings) while trying to keep abreast of the windfall apples day by day; apple dessert cake for this evening.
When we got back here last Friday we were keen to catch up with the post, which contained several birthday cards for N. He was also expecting a parcel from his daughter Kathryn, and I hoped there would be some news of the present I had ordered for him from the UK by various secret e-mails, which I had been tracking while in Paris. There was a delivery slip left by the postman, so we went straight to the post office, but it was only a very small package containing my Filofax diary pages for 2007, ordered by Internet! I was worried about the present, which should have arrived by then, but in the evening before I had time to e-mail an enquiry, our neighbour Annick (next door to Marie-Antoinette) rang the bell and said she had taken in a parcel for me, to save it having to be sent back. I was delighted, and so was she when I said it was N’s birthday present.
He fortunately was delighted too; it was a beautifully-crafted Georgian wooden music stand, easy to put together and very elegant, and he claimed he had always wanted one. It stood in the grande pièce being admired for a few days, but has now gone up to his attic study, where by happy coincidence it matches the beams.
The parcel from Kathryn arrived safely on Saturday morning; it was beautiful album of photos from the family visit/musical house party last month; lovely pictures and beautifully put together, we sat and looked at it for about half an hour. I was particularly pleased to see photos of the picnic, as I hadn’t taken any and it had been such a lovely sunny day.
I thought Annick might be interested to see what was in the parcel, so I invited her in for tea on Saturday afternoon. As I thought, she was interested to see the house; some years ago when she was first widowed and her son was small she had done some cleaning here. She told me she had been widowed twice and that you never knew what life was going to throw up; I agreed and said that although N and I had known each other for 10 years we had only been living together for a year; she said « You’re a young couple! »
We talked a lot about what do with apples; she said her second husband had several apple trees, and as he was a hunter she made apple sauce to e at with game. I said I really needed to find some blackberries, and she said there had been some round the corner on the road to Conches, but that they were mostly over. We looked at the vegetable garden; she said she always thought a vegetable garden kept a man occupied, which amused me greatly, and like Marie-Antoinette she knew a lot about growing vegetables but was surprised that I knew how to make curtains. She admired those in the grande pièce; I said they’d had to be very inexpensive from IKEA as there were eight of them.
N didn’t join in this tea party as he was busy in the outhouse painting shutters, taking up where he had left off before going to Switzerland. There are 10 shutters in this first (ground floor) batch, each requiring one undercoat and two top coats, each side. The deadline is next Monday, when Monsieur P and his band are coming to hang them. On Tuesday morning he took time off from the shutters - and I from peeling apples - and we went to L’Aigle market on the bus. N said what were we going to do for all that time? but found that there was so much to see that the time went very quickly. There were not so many plant stalls as usual, but we bought a roast chicken because it smelt so good, and a « real » Camembert, some ginger (for the marrow jam) and amazingly, some strawberries from the same stall as in July. N bought a teach yourself Spanish course, of which more later.
The shutters are now all finished apart from sanding down some dribbles of paint which got in between the slats, and N has moved on to the window frames, ready for the hanging of the shutters. I have been putting masking tape round the panes on all the windows involved, and on a few other windows and doors, ready for painting. I thought as I did so that the doors and windows with small panes were one of the things I liked most about the house when I first saw it, not thinking how fiddly they would be to paint, but think it will be well worth it. N has now finished the undercoat on all these (just as well as it’s now raining hard) and already the effect is much better; off-white satin as opposed to old flaky pale grey.
Saturday 30 September 2006
On Thursday afternoon we went out again, to visit Bernay this time, mainly to get further supplies of paint at Monsieur Bricolage. I got a useful under-bed plastic box on rollers, for storing summer clothes, and we stocked up at the supermarket. We went to the garden centre too, as N wanted sacks of peat to store the carrots and other vegetables through the winter, in wooden boxes in the wine cellar. There were even more Christmas decorations there than last time, and they still don’t look as though they’ve all been unpacked yet; metres and metres of wooden crèches, stars, candles, glittery leaves and those inflatable Father Christmases to put on the roof, which amused me last year both here and in Saint-Denis. In one corner, almost as an afterthought, there was a small selection of Halloween items.
I had remembered to take along a sample apple from our tree, and after consulting the apples chart myself, found a helpful employee out by the fruit trees. He reckoned it was a Reine de Reinette, and said we’d find it was good for eating and cooking, I said we already had.
When we got back there was a phone message from Monsieur P, asking if he could come and fetch the upstairs shutters, and before we could do anything he arrived with his assistant, who carefully took the shutters down the ladder after Monsieur P had unhooked them from beside the windows. He said he thought we might have been out in the garden painting shutters and was amused when I said we’d had to go out to get more paint. He asked me quietly if N wasn’t just a little bit fed up with painting shutters, and I said I thought he was. After taking down the shutters from the bedroom balcony he looked round the room and said what a wonderful house we had here, and that it reflected me. Both N and I were quite pleased and touched by this. (I think he cannot have been looking at N’s old painting/gardening trousers on the back of a chair.)
After much of Friday and Saturday spent sticking masking tape round window panes and going to get more tape from the Quincaillerie (me) and painting final coats on all downstairs window frames (N) it all looks very good. (I then spent nearly as much time removing the masking tape.) It’s not strictly speaking all the downstairs window frames, just those on the three sides of the house where there are beams and traditional louvred shutters. The windows on the fourth garden side (possibly built later) have brick surrounds and roll-down shutters, and will not be painted until next spring.
More apples have been retrieved, sorted, peeled and frozen and N has started putting perfect ones on the shelf in the first outhouse, claiming they that will last like this all winter. They are stored on the white packing paper Abels used for wrapping my china; there is a vast amount, and this is a perfect use for it. We have also noticed that the swallows in the garage seem to have left without saying goodbye, while we were in Paris.
In between times - after much indecision - N has finally ordered a new computer for his attic study (he maintained it was birthday present to himself) and set it all up.
I have begun to put away the garden furniture; although until the next batch of shutters has been painted there is not much room in the outhouse. I have also planted bulbs in the urns outside the wine cellar, having removed the old straggly petunias, and picked the last of the golden dahlias to put in a vase in the salon. Have also made seven pots of lovely marrow and ginger jam, once I had finally got hold of both the root and crystallized ginger required by the recipe. I am pleased to say that is the last of the giant marrows waiting patiently in the outhouse.
Meanwhile we expect three or four lots of guests over the next month or two - encouraging after so many were going to come and then didn’t, during the early summer - and a Christmas outing to the opera has been booked for December 21st! We are also going to Barcelona for a few days at the beginning of November, hence the Spanish course. N says he has begun to learn Spanish so many times; I have only begun once, in 1975, but have found on my shelves the book I had then and have taken it down to study. At the moment however, George Sand is taking much of my reading time - her style takes a little getting used to, currently a lot of history and family detail from before she was born.
We have been back in Normandy six days now, and only yesterday did I feel I had got to grips with all the apples in the garden! So many had fallen while we were away, and on Saturday morning I picked them all up, and put the worst straight into the compost bin. The rest I laid out on the garden table, where they filled an area of about a square metre. Several afternoons this week I have sat the table peeling and cutting them in the pale autumn sunshine, thinking this is what having a Normandy house and garden is all about. I have frozen several lots in chunks, some as compôte, and am on the second batch of apple jelly.
Friday 29 September 2006
Second batch of apple jelly a great success; darker and more flavour than the first, perhaps the apples were riper? I must now turn my attention to marrow and ginger jam, (and then Christmas puddings) while trying to keep abreast of the windfall apples day by day; apple dessert cake for this evening.
When we got back here last Friday we were keen to catch up with the post, which contained several birthday cards for N. He was also expecting a parcel from his daughter Kathryn, and I hoped there would be some news of the present I had ordered for him from the UK by various secret e-mails, which I had been tracking while in Paris. There was a delivery slip left by the postman, so we went straight to the post office, but it was only a very small package containing my Filofax diary pages for 2007, ordered by Internet! I was worried about the present, which should have arrived by then, but in the evening before I had time to e-mail an enquiry, our neighbour Annick (next door to Marie-Antoinette) rang the bell and said she had taken in a parcel for me, to save it having to be sent back. I was delighted, and so was she when I said it was N’s birthday present.
He fortunately was delighted too; it was a beautifully-crafted Georgian wooden music stand, easy to put together and very elegant, and he claimed he had always wanted one. It stood in the grande pièce being admired for a few days, but has now gone up to his attic study, where by happy coincidence it matches the beams.
The parcel from Kathryn arrived safely on Saturday morning; it was beautiful album of photos from the family visit/musical house party last month; lovely pictures and beautifully put together, we sat and looked at it for about half an hour. I was particularly pleased to see photos of the picnic, as I hadn’t taken any and it had been such a lovely sunny day.
I thought Annick might be interested to see what was in the parcel, so I invited her in for tea on Saturday afternoon. As I thought, she was interested to see the house; some years ago when she was first widowed and her son was small she had done some cleaning here. She told me she had been widowed twice and that you never knew what life was going to throw up; I agreed and said that although N and I had known each other for 10 years we had only been living together for a year; she said « You’re a young couple! »
We talked a lot about what do with apples; she said her second husband had several apple trees, and as he was a hunter she made apple sauce to e at with game. I said I really needed to find some blackberries, and she said there had been some round the corner on the road to Conches, but that they were mostly over. We looked at the vegetable garden; she said she always thought a vegetable garden kept a man occupied, which amused me greatly, and like Marie-Antoinette she knew a lot about growing vegetables but was surprised that I knew how to make curtains. She admired those in the grande pièce; I said they’d had to be very inexpensive from IKEA as there were eight of them.
N didn’t join in this tea party as he was busy in the outhouse painting shutters, taking up where he had left off before going to Switzerland. There are 10 shutters in this first (ground floor) batch, each requiring one undercoat and two top coats, each side. The deadline is next Monday, when Monsieur P and his band are coming to hang them. On Tuesday morning he took time off from the shutters - and I from peeling apples - and we went to L’Aigle market on the bus. N said what were we going to do for all that time? but found that there was so much to see that the time went very quickly. There were not so many plant stalls as usual, but we bought a roast chicken because it smelt so good, and a « real » Camembert, some ginger (for the marrow jam) and amazingly, some strawberries from the same stall as in July. N bought a teach yourself Spanish course, of which more later.
The shutters are now all finished apart from sanding down some dribbles of paint which got in between the slats, and N has moved on to the window frames, ready for the hanging of the shutters. I have been putting masking tape round the panes on all the windows involved, and on a few other windows and doors, ready for painting. I thought as I did so that the doors and windows with small panes were one of the things I liked most about the house when I first saw it, not thinking how fiddly they would be to paint, but think it will be well worth it. N has now finished the undercoat on all these (just as well as it’s now raining hard) and already the effect is much better; off-white satin as opposed to old flaky pale grey.
Saturday 30 September 2006
On Thursday afternoon we went out again, to visit Bernay this time, mainly to get further supplies of paint at Monsieur Bricolage. I got a useful under-bed plastic box on rollers, for storing summer clothes, and we stocked up at the supermarket. We went to the garden centre too, as N wanted sacks of peat to store the carrots and other vegetables through the winter, in wooden boxes in the wine cellar. There were even more Christmas decorations there than last time, and they still don’t look as though they’ve all been unpacked yet; metres and metres of wooden crèches, stars, candles, glittery leaves and those inflatable Father Christmases to put on the roof, which amused me last year both here and in Saint-Denis. In one corner, almost as an afterthought, there was a small selection of Halloween items.
I had remembered to take along a sample apple from our tree, and after consulting the apples chart myself, found a helpful employee out by the fruit trees. He reckoned it was a Reine de Reinette, and said we’d find it was good for eating and cooking, I said we already had.
When we got back there was a phone message from Monsieur P, asking if he could come and fetch the upstairs shutters, and before we could do anything he arrived with his assistant, who carefully took the shutters down the ladder after Monsieur P had unhooked them from beside the windows. He said he thought we might have been out in the garden painting shutters and was amused when I said we’d had to go out to get more paint. He asked me quietly if N wasn’t just a little bit fed up with painting shutters, and I said I thought he was. After taking down the shutters from the bedroom balcony he looked round the room and said what a wonderful house we had here, and that it reflected me. Both N and I were quite pleased and touched by this. (I think he cannot have been looking at N’s old painting/gardening trousers on the back of a chair.)
After much of Friday and Saturday spent sticking masking tape round window panes and going to get more tape from the Quincaillerie (me) and painting final coats on all downstairs window frames (N) it all looks very good. (I then spent nearly as much time removing the masking tape.) It’s not strictly speaking all the downstairs window frames, just those on the three sides of the house where there are beams and traditional louvred shutters. The windows on the fourth garden side (possibly built later) have brick surrounds and roll-down shutters, and will not be painted until next spring.
More apples have been retrieved, sorted, peeled and frozen and N has started putting perfect ones on the shelf in the first outhouse, claiming they that will last like this all winter. They are stored on the white packing paper Abels used for wrapping my china; there is a vast amount, and this is a perfect use for it. We have also noticed that the swallows in the garage seem to have left without saying goodbye, while we were in Paris.
In between times - after much indecision - N has finally ordered a new computer for his attic study (he maintained it was birthday present to himself) and set it all up.
I have begun to put away the garden furniture; although until the next batch of shutters has been painted there is not much room in the outhouse. I have also planted bulbs in the urns outside the wine cellar, having removed the old straggly petunias, and picked the last of the golden dahlias to put in a vase in the salon. Have also made seven pots of lovely marrow and ginger jam, once I had finally got hold of both the root and crystallized ginger required by the recipe. I am pleased to say that is the last of the giant marrows waiting patiently in the outhouse.
Meanwhile we expect three or four lots of guests over the next month or two - encouraging after so many were going to come and then didn’t, during the early summer - and a Christmas outing to the opera has been booked for December 21st! We are also going to Barcelona for a few days at the beginning of November, hence the Spanish course. N says he has begun to learn Spanish so many times; I have only begun once, in 1975, but have found on my shelves the book I had then and have taken it down to study. At the moment however, George Sand is taking much of my reading time - her style takes a little getting used to, currently a lot of history and family detail from before she was born.
