Sunday, November 26, 2006
Friday 10 November 2006
Once back in Paris after the trip to Barcelona there was all the usual catching up to be done, and several phone messages to be dealt with. Before leaving I had checked the messages at LNL, and as well as one from the post mistress about insufficient postage (again!) there were two others, the first from Monsieur P responding to our lunch/dinner invitation, thanking us and saying they would be very pleased to come on Sat 11th for lunch. The second one was from Madame P, saying it was very kind, but that she was going to Morocco then so they were unable to come. I had left dealing with all these until we were back, and on listening to them again found another message, left by our former house agent Monsieur Urset on Tuesday, asking us to dinner on the following Saturday! There was also a message on the Saint-Denis phone from Nigel Palmer, asking if we would like to go and see the film « The Queen » with them on Wednesday.
It took some time to reply to all of these; apologised to M Urset, who said he had passed by the house and it looked shut up, but he would be in contact again; spoke to Madame P and suggested w/e 25/26 November, she said she would ask her husband, and left a message for NP thanking him, saying we had been away, but that I planned to go and see « The Queen » on Sunday, and also thanking him for telling me about the Saint-Denis cinema. N just said « You see? » as he often does, and that he had maintained that it would take at least a year to get to know people. When I went out into Saint-Denis I met NP so was able to relay my message to him in person; just as well as he rang N later to say it had got deleted and was there anything important in it??
I enjoyed « The Queen » on Sunday afternoon - very well made indeed - and enjoyed the cinema even more, having now been in both the different « rooms » and the fact that it is only about 10 minutes walk from the apartment.
N spent the next few days continuing labelling and dusting the books in his library, and finishing off the Lexique so that he was able to print a proof copy. Apart from the cinema, I did enormous amounts of washing and ironing and food shopping. On Monday afternoon we drove into Paris (my final trip in the old car) to the rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine to fetch N’s newly stuffed sofa cushions. It was the first time N had been into the workshop - I felt I knew them all as old friends! We carried the very large but wonderfully renovated cushions back to the car, and then drove home by a different route, via the Place de la Nation where I had never been before, and through Vincennes.
N helped me with the cushions up to the apartment, and then went to park the car in the public car park. I arranged them on the sofa and made tea and was just sitting down to it - very comfortably! - when he arrived back and suggested we go and put the old cushions in the bin straight away and get rid of them. We took one large cushion each and quickly crossed over to the rubbish shed without our coats, and then N said « Have you got your key? » and I said « No, you told me you had yours, » and we were locked out.
It could have been a lot worse. The gardienne (concierge) was outside in the courtyard with some Portuguese builders; she unlocked the door to our building, and sent up one of the men with a piece of curved metal. There are two doors to N’s apartment, and fortunately the inner one with the vastly complicated expensive lock had just been left ajar, the outer one was only on the latch, and after some minutes the builder managed to pull the catch open through the letter box. N gave him 20 euros, with which he seemed very pleased, and we heaved a sigh of relief and went in to get warm and drink our rather stewed tea.
N found me an e-mail address for the local Music Conservatoire so I sent a message asking the date of the Chorale Adulte’s Christmas concert, and got a reply from a secretary whose name I didn’t recognise - Wednesday 5 December but no firm venue. If it’s anything like the summer the date won’t be firm either. Currently we’re not due to be in Saint-Denis then, but we’ll see.
We had been waiting to hear from the Renault garage that the new car would be ready for collection on Tuesday as expected, but heard nothing until early Tuesday afternoon; it might be ready on Wednesday but it was not certain. In any case we wouldn’t be able to leave until N had organised the insurance, so I decided to go back by train on Tuesday afternoon. We had been away from Normandy for two weeks, but it felt a lot longer, as there had been two « stays » in Saint-Denis with the trip to Barcelona in between, and I was anxious to catch up with the post and garden and just wanted to get back and see everything! I also wanted to travel back in the new car, but as N said, it could go on for several days being « possibly tomorrow » and there was the added complication of a train strike on Wednesday. I hadn’t got train or bus timetables with me, but was able to find an e-mail I had sent Caroline with details of connections, so got the 17.29 from Saint Lazare, which connected with a bus at 18.35 at Evreux.
Most of the journey was in the dark, which was not ideal, but it all went smoothly; the bus full up for once, mostly with students from the Lycée at Evreux returning home to their various villages. At La Neuve-Lyre the street lights were on and the house seemed very solid and secure with all its new shutters closed. I remembered how to put on the hot water and heating, the latter got going quickly but it took time to warm up; in spite of pyjamas and a hot water bottle I woke up twice in the night with cold head and shoulders. The post included several things for N, who is having his post redirected here again, including a message from the post office about a recorded letter. I had a tax bill for the equivalent of Council Tax, which we had thought I might be exempt from, due to my feeble income, but perhaps next year! There was a phone message from Monsieur P, saying he and his wife would be pleased to come for lunch at midday on Sat 25 November, barring an earthquake. (N said later, what about floods?) I sent them a postcard confirming this.
The next morning it took some time to open all the shutters and inspect the garden - all busy lizzies dead from the cold, but cyclamen doing well, and lots more windfall apples. All the red leaves had fallen off the Virginia creeper along the front railings. Our neighbour Annick brought round a small parcel for N that she had taken in, and said there had been several frosts. I set off for the post office to collect N’s letter and pay my debt to the post mistress (25 centimes) but was surprised to find it full of workmen reconstructing it entirely, and singing loudly a song called « Où sont les femmes? » They claimed not to know anything about current arrangements, and suggested I ask at the Mairie. There I met a man coming out, who said post could be collected there between 9 and 11 every morning; it was then 11.45. So I went on to the cycle repair shop, neither I nor the bicycle lady had been able to find any tyres to fit my bicycle, so I said I would try on the Internet. She had one more dealer to try. I had pickled herrings for lunch (from the traiteur) while watching « Yes, Minister » on BBC Prime.
N phoned and said the new car would be ready at 2.30 that afternoon, he would set off about 3.30 and promised to drive very carefully and not to forget any of the things he was supposed to bring, including the new blinds which had been bought a fortnight ago. I enjoyed baking an apple and cinnamon cake, and making a pork casserole for dinner. He arrived as scheduled at about six, during what I thought was power cut, but later found was a failure of a fuse for the whole house, which N remedied by pressing the appropriate switch.
The following morning we went to seek out the postmistress at the Mairie; N fetched his recorded letter and I paid my debt. She said that when the new post office was up and running (29 November) it would be automated and she wouldn’t be able to contact me about deficient postage, and what we needed was a tariff of postal costs - I said we had a tariff, what we needed was a good pair of scales, like we had in Paris. Watch this space.
Wednesday 22 November 2006
The next day I enjoyed my first outing in the new car, a trip to the supermarket at Bernay. Apart from the smooth ride and the newness of it all, plus numerous places to store things, the most entertaining thing was the inbuilt satellite navigation - a sophisticated French female voice telling us when to turn and uncannily letting us know when roundabouts were coming up. On Sunday we set out for a longer journey to somewhere we didn’t know as well - Lisieux - in order to test it. We intended to go to an antiques fair, which despite posters every few metres, we failed to find, but visited the town’s main attraction, the Basilique of Saint Thérèse.
It was very large and quite unlike anything I had seen before; early twentieth century architecture with the life of Saint Thérèse in pictures around the walls; particularly vague, I thought, as to her qualifications for sainthood, but with many comments and blessings from other well-known visitors.
We also finally fitted the concertina fabric blinds bought at Leroy Merlin some weeks ago; a wide cream one for the glass panelled front door, and two red ones side by side at the kitchen window over the sink which looks out into the verandah. It’s good to be able to shut the dark out, but takes a very long time each morning and evening to open and close them and wind up all their little strings.
The few days before going back to Paris on the Wednesday were filled with clearing and tidying the house ready for the visit of daughter Madeleine the week after. I also spent a lot of time proof-reading the copy of the Lexique which N had printed out, finding quite a few typing, punctuation and spacing errors. On Tuesday afternoon we had a visit from a water purification expert who analysed our tap water and found it to be full of lime scale and other impurities, no surprise to us as we have been fighting the dreaded local « calcaire » in the washing machine, dishwasher and bathrooms ever since we arrived here. He proposed selling us a very expensive purifying system, including filtered drinking water, which N surprised me by accepting. The following morning at the hairdressers, while chatting with his stylist N discovered that she had had a similar system installed by our regular local builder Monsieur A, for about half the cost! After having discussed all this (which the water purification expert hadn’t really given us a chance to do) we decided to cancel the original agreement quickly and ask Monsieur A round to give us an estimate.
We drove back to Paris on Wednesday afternoon in beautifully unseasonable sunshine - at one stage the new car’s information system showed 19 degrees! and the weather forecast the night before had talked of all-time temperature records for November nights. Almost as soon as we arrived N had a phone call from the editor of the Lexique; the remaining 200 odd copies of the first edition had just been bought up, and could they have the revised version as soon possible. Fortunately he was in a position to say we would send it straight away, and after a final read through - both of us checking it on screen and altering the spacing as required, I updated the covering letter and on Thursday the disk was posted.
This was well timed, as on Thursday evening Madeleine arrived to spend six days with us; three in Paris and three in Normandy. She and I had two days out in Paris together, the day first shopping at the Grands Magasins in the Boulevard Haussmann, looking at the Christmas lights and shop windows. These seemed strangely inappropriate, as the sky was bright blue, the sun shining and it was not at all cold; we hung round until it was dark (about 5.30) so that we could see them properly. The restaurants in Galeries Lafayette were all crowded and expensive, so we lunched in a little brasserie in a side street, and had mid-afternoon hot chocolate in the Swiss House in the GL interiors department over the road. On Friday we visited the Passages Couverts, aided by all my new knowledge gained during the Journées du Patrimoine. As I anticipated we spent a lot of time in a traditional toy shop and a kitchen shop in the Passage Jouffroy, and at lunchtime set off to look for a lovely old-fashioned restaurant which N had taken me to several years ago, and supposedly nearby, called Chartier. We walked a very long way in the wrong direction - but a nice walk past interesting shops in the sunshine; unsure whether the restaurant was in the rue Montmartre, the Boulevard Montmartre or the rue du Faubourg Montmartre. I still can’t remember, but we found it eventually, and I could now find it again from the metro Grands Boulevards.
It had opened in 1896, and apart from the addition of electricity at some time, hardly anything seemed to have changed. There were clusters of globe-shaped lights hanging from the ceiling, brass rails over the tables to store coats and bags, and even little numbered drawers where the original customers had kept their personal table napkins! The idea had been to feed them cheaply and well, and prices were still low, bills were written out on the paper tablecloths, and the waiters still wore long white aprons and traditional waistcoats with lots of useful pockets. It was very crowded and we were allocated a little table with two other ladies. Food was very meaty and traditional, and the half-bottle of vin ordinaire for about 2 euros was very good. Over lunch we discussed what to do next, and decided to go up towards Montmartre, which turned out to be rather a mistake - all the weekday afternoons I had been there last winter looking for curtain material it hadn’t been crowded at all, but Saturday afternoon was something different! We ended up spending a long time in Tati and similar shops, buying Christmas decorations and wrapping materials.
Sunday 26 November 2006
Last Sunday afternoon we all drove back to La Neuve-Lyre; the house warmed up slowly, we lit the fire and took out of the freezer some wonderful pot-au-feu N had made earlier. M and I made an experimental rhubarb cake using apples instead, as a trial run for next week’s lunch party; it worked very well. She and I went to the local market on Monday morning, and in the afternoon we drove to Bernay; N kindly offering to sit in the car park playing with the gadgets in his new car while M and I went shopping in Casa; more Christmas items for M and new wineglasses for me, also for the lunch party. (When we got back he had managed to get the voice on the navigation speaking in Italian; very strange as we went through the Norman countryside.) We then went on - in heavy rain; proper November weather seemed to have arrived at last - to the supermarket Intermarché and the garden centre. The latter was full of the most amazing Christmas decorations and effects, far more than when we had last been there. There were nativity displays with the traditional French « santons » (all kinds of different merchants and characters) colour themed areas, animals, snow scenes and even a waterfall. N ordered three fruit trees; two different kinds of plum - quetsch and reine-claude - and an apricot to replace the one that died, which were delivered a few days later. And right at the end we saw the resident black cat, asleep in her basket by the till; M had been most anxious to see her.
On Tuesday M and I took the bus to L’Aigle market, a little disappointing as there were far fewer stalls than usual, perhaps after the bad weather day before, or perhaps they slacken off before the lead up to Christmas. All the villages we went though on the bus now had their Christmas decorations up, including La Neuve-Lyre where there are some rather sophisticated shooting stars. It was cold and windy and we were glad to be home again in the warm by lunchtime. Monsieur A came to give us an estimate for the water purification system - less than half of the original one - he suggested we have it in the corner of the verandah behind the sink rather than under it, easier to start with and certainly easier in case of any future leaks. It will be nice to have Guillaume and Emanuel working here again, rather than a new engineer we don’t know.
M left on Wednesday morning; we drove her to the station at Conches, nearer then Evreux, and where the ticket office opens just in time for each train - most trains to Paris go straight though Conches without stopping, so we were lucky to find one that connected well with her Eurostar. N was amazed at the weight of her very big suitcase filled with Christmas shopping.
Since finishing the Lexique N’s latest project is the history of La Neuve-Lyre and La Vieille-Lyre, which have apparently had these names since at least the fourteenth century. La Vieille-Lyre was the site of a very large and important abbey, entirely destroyed in the Revolution. He has found a website of a young history graduate in LVL also writing his own account of the village; N has sent him a message but received no reply so far. There are also many history books on the subject which N is in the process of buying over the Internet; the postman calls frequently these days. I am more interested in learning more about the area as it is now, and am looking forward to a visit to Evreux once N is ready to visit libraries and archives. Apart from our very first visit there at the start of house-hunting, and the day of the house sale signature, all we do is go through the outskirts of the town and past the station on our way to and from Paris. N has also discovered the existence of a film made in La Vieille-Lyre in 1952 called « Le Trou Normand », memorable for possibly being Brigitte Bardot’s first film, also starring the French comic actor Bourvil. We have ordered a copy on DVD, and are looking forward to seeing it once it arrives.
Once back in Paris after the trip to Barcelona there was all the usual catching up to be done, and several phone messages to be dealt with. Before leaving I had checked the messages at LNL, and as well as one from the post mistress about insufficient postage (again!) there were two others, the first from Monsieur P responding to our lunch/dinner invitation, thanking us and saying they would be very pleased to come on Sat 11th for lunch. The second one was from Madame P, saying it was very kind, but that she was going to Morocco then so they were unable to come. I had left dealing with all these until we were back, and on listening to them again found another message, left by our former house agent Monsieur Urset on Tuesday, asking us to dinner on the following Saturday! There was also a message on the Saint-Denis phone from Nigel Palmer, asking if we would like to go and see the film « The Queen » with them on Wednesday.
It took some time to reply to all of these; apologised to M Urset, who said he had passed by the house and it looked shut up, but he would be in contact again; spoke to Madame P and suggested w/e 25/26 November, she said she would ask her husband, and left a message for NP thanking him, saying we had been away, but that I planned to go and see « The Queen » on Sunday, and also thanking him for telling me about the Saint-Denis cinema. N just said « You see? » as he often does, and that he had maintained that it would take at least a year to get to know people. When I went out into Saint-Denis I met NP so was able to relay my message to him in person; just as well as he rang N later to say it had got deleted and was there anything important in it??
I enjoyed « The Queen » on Sunday afternoon - very well made indeed - and enjoyed the cinema even more, having now been in both the different « rooms » and the fact that it is only about 10 minutes walk from the apartment.
N spent the next few days continuing labelling and dusting the books in his library, and finishing off the Lexique so that he was able to print a proof copy. Apart from the cinema, I did enormous amounts of washing and ironing and food shopping. On Monday afternoon we drove into Paris (my final trip in the old car) to the rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine to fetch N’s newly stuffed sofa cushions. It was the first time N had been into the workshop - I felt I knew them all as old friends! We carried the very large but wonderfully renovated cushions back to the car, and then drove home by a different route, via the Place de la Nation where I had never been before, and through Vincennes.
N helped me with the cushions up to the apartment, and then went to park the car in the public car park. I arranged them on the sofa and made tea and was just sitting down to it - very comfortably! - when he arrived back and suggested we go and put the old cushions in the bin straight away and get rid of them. We took one large cushion each and quickly crossed over to the rubbish shed without our coats, and then N said « Have you got your key? » and I said « No, you told me you had yours, » and we were locked out.
It could have been a lot worse. The gardienne (concierge) was outside in the courtyard with some Portuguese builders; she unlocked the door to our building, and sent up one of the men with a piece of curved metal. There are two doors to N’s apartment, and fortunately the inner one with the vastly complicated expensive lock had just been left ajar, the outer one was only on the latch, and after some minutes the builder managed to pull the catch open through the letter box. N gave him 20 euros, with which he seemed very pleased, and we heaved a sigh of relief and went in to get warm and drink our rather stewed tea.
N found me an e-mail address for the local Music Conservatoire so I sent a message asking the date of the Chorale Adulte’s Christmas concert, and got a reply from a secretary whose name I didn’t recognise - Wednesday 5 December but no firm venue. If it’s anything like the summer the date won’t be firm either. Currently we’re not due to be in Saint-Denis then, but we’ll see.
We had been waiting to hear from the Renault garage that the new car would be ready for collection on Tuesday as expected, but heard nothing until early Tuesday afternoon; it might be ready on Wednesday but it was not certain. In any case we wouldn’t be able to leave until N had organised the insurance, so I decided to go back by train on Tuesday afternoon. We had been away from Normandy for two weeks, but it felt a lot longer, as there had been two « stays » in Saint-Denis with the trip to Barcelona in between, and I was anxious to catch up with the post and garden and just wanted to get back and see everything! I also wanted to travel back in the new car, but as N said, it could go on for several days being « possibly tomorrow » and there was the added complication of a train strike on Wednesday. I hadn’t got train or bus timetables with me, but was able to find an e-mail I had sent Caroline with details of connections, so got the 17.29 from Saint Lazare, which connected with a bus at 18.35 at Evreux.
Most of the journey was in the dark, which was not ideal, but it all went smoothly; the bus full up for once, mostly with students from the Lycée at Evreux returning home to their various villages. At La Neuve-Lyre the street lights were on and the house seemed very solid and secure with all its new shutters closed. I remembered how to put on the hot water and heating, the latter got going quickly but it took time to warm up; in spite of pyjamas and a hot water bottle I woke up twice in the night with cold head and shoulders. The post included several things for N, who is having his post redirected here again, including a message from the post office about a recorded letter. I had a tax bill for the equivalent of Council Tax, which we had thought I might be exempt from, due to my feeble income, but perhaps next year! There was a phone message from Monsieur P, saying he and his wife would be pleased to come for lunch at midday on Sat 25 November, barring an earthquake. (N said later, what about floods?) I sent them a postcard confirming this.
The next morning it took some time to open all the shutters and inspect the garden - all busy lizzies dead from the cold, but cyclamen doing well, and lots more windfall apples. All the red leaves had fallen off the Virginia creeper along the front railings. Our neighbour Annick brought round a small parcel for N that she had taken in, and said there had been several frosts. I set off for the post office to collect N’s letter and pay my debt to the post mistress (25 centimes) but was surprised to find it full of workmen reconstructing it entirely, and singing loudly a song called « Où sont les femmes? » They claimed not to know anything about current arrangements, and suggested I ask at the Mairie. There I met a man coming out, who said post could be collected there between 9 and 11 every morning; it was then 11.45. So I went on to the cycle repair shop, neither I nor the bicycle lady had been able to find any tyres to fit my bicycle, so I said I would try on the Internet. She had one more dealer to try. I had pickled herrings for lunch (from the traiteur) while watching « Yes, Minister » on BBC Prime.
N phoned and said the new car would be ready at 2.30 that afternoon, he would set off about 3.30 and promised to drive very carefully and not to forget any of the things he was supposed to bring, including the new blinds which had been bought a fortnight ago. I enjoyed baking an apple and cinnamon cake, and making a pork casserole for dinner. He arrived as scheduled at about six, during what I thought was power cut, but later found was a failure of a fuse for the whole house, which N remedied by pressing the appropriate switch.
The following morning we went to seek out the postmistress at the Mairie; N fetched his recorded letter and I paid my debt. She said that when the new post office was up and running (29 November) it would be automated and she wouldn’t be able to contact me about deficient postage, and what we needed was a tariff of postal costs - I said we had a tariff, what we needed was a good pair of scales, like we had in Paris. Watch this space.
Wednesday 22 November 2006
The next day I enjoyed my first outing in the new car, a trip to the supermarket at Bernay. Apart from the smooth ride and the newness of it all, plus numerous places to store things, the most entertaining thing was the inbuilt satellite navigation - a sophisticated French female voice telling us when to turn and uncannily letting us know when roundabouts were coming up. On Sunday we set out for a longer journey to somewhere we didn’t know as well - Lisieux - in order to test it. We intended to go to an antiques fair, which despite posters every few metres, we failed to find, but visited the town’s main attraction, the Basilique of Saint Thérèse.
It was very large and quite unlike anything I had seen before; early twentieth century architecture with the life of Saint Thérèse in pictures around the walls; particularly vague, I thought, as to her qualifications for sainthood, but with many comments and blessings from other well-known visitors.
We also finally fitted the concertina fabric blinds bought at Leroy Merlin some weeks ago; a wide cream one for the glass panelled front door, and two red ones side by side at the kitchen window over the sink which looks out into the verandah. It’s good to be able to shut the dark out, but takes a very long time each morning and evening to open and close them and wind up all their little strings.
The few days before going back to Paris on the Wednesday were filled with clearing and tidying the house ready for the visit of daughter Madeleine the week after. I also spent a lot of time proof-reading the copy of the Lexique which N had printed out, finding quite a few typing, punctuation and spacing errors. On Tuesday afternoon we had a visit from a water purification expert who analysed our tap water and found it to be full of lime scale and other impurities, no surprise to us as we have been fighting the dreaded local « calcaire » in the washing machine, dishwasher and bathrooms ever since we arrived here. He proposed selling us a very expensive purifying system, including filtered drinking water, which N surprised me by accepting. The following morning at the hairdressers, while chatting with his stylist N discovered that she had had a similar system installed by our regular local builder Monsieur A, for about half the cost! After having discussed all this (which the water purification expert hadn’t really given us a chance to do) we decided to cancel the original agreement quickly and ask Monsieur A round to give us an estimate.
We drove back to Paris on Wednesday afternoon in beautifully unseasonable sunshine - at one stage the new car’s information system showed 19 degrees! and the weather forecast the night before had talked of all-time temperature records for November nights. Almost as soon as we arrived N had a phone call from the editor of the Lexique; the remaining 200 odd copies of the first edition had just been bought up, and could they have the revised version as soon possible. Fortunately he was in a position to say we would send it straight away, and after a final read through - both of us checking it on screen and altering the spacing as required, I updated the covering letter and on Thursday the disk was posted.
This was well timed, as on Thursday evening Madeleine arrived to spend six days with us; three in Paris and three in Normandy. She and I had two days out in Paris together, the day first shopping at the Grands Magasins in the Boulevard Haussmann, looking at the Christmas lights and shop windows. These seemed strangely inappropriate, as the sky was bright blue, the sun shining and it was not at all cold; we hung round until it was dark (about 5.30) so that we could see them properly. The restaurants in Galeries Lafayette were all crowded and expensive, so we lunched in a little brasserie in a side street, and had mid-afternoon hot chocolate in the Swiss House in the GL interiors department over the road. On Friday we visited the Passages Couverts, aided by all my new knowledge gained during the Journées du Patrimoine. As I anticipated we spent a lot of time in a traditional toy shop and a kitchen shop in the Passage Jouffroy, and at lunchtime set off to look for a lovely old-fashioned restaurant which N had taken me to several years ago, and supposedly nearby, called Chartier. We walked a very long way in the wrong direction - but a nice walk past interesting shops in the sunshine; unsure whether the restaurant was in the rue Montmartre, the Boulevard Montmartre or the rue du Faubourg Montmartre. I still can’t remember, but we found it eventually, and I could now find it again from the metro Grands Boulevards.
It had opened in 1896, and apart from the addition of electricity at some time, hardly anything seemed to have changed. There were clusters of globe-shaped lights hanging from the ceiling, brass rails over the tables to store coats and bags, and even little numbered drawers where the original customers had kept their personal table napkins! The idea had been to feed them cheaply and well, and prices were still low, bills were written out on the paper tablecloths, and the waiters still wore long white aprons and traditional waistcoats with lots of useful pockets. It was very crowded and we were allocated a little table with two other ladies. Food was very meaty and traditional, and the half-bottle of vin ordinaire for about 2 euros was very good. Over lunch we discussed what to do next, and decided to go up towards Montmartre, which turned out to be rather a mistake - all the weekday afternoons I had been there last winter looking for curtain material it hadn’t been crowded at all, but Saturday afternoon was something different! We ended up spending a long time in Tati and similar shops, buying Christmas decorations and wrapping materials.
Sunday 26 November 2006
Last Sunday afternoon we all drove back to La Neuve-Lyre; the house warmed up slowly, we lit the fire and took out of the freezer some wonderful pot-au-feu N had made earlier. M and I made an experimental rhubarb cake using apples instead, as a trial run for next week’s lunch party; it worked very well. She and I went to the local market on Monday morning, and in the afternoon we drove to Bernay; N kindly offering to sit in the car park playing with the gadgets in his new car while M and I went shopping in Casa; more Christmas items for M and new wineglasses for me, also for the lunch party. (When we got back he had managed to get the voice on the navigation speaking in Italian; very strange as we went through the Norman countryside.) We then went on - in heavy rain; proper November weather seemed to have arrived at last - to the supermarket Intermarché and the garden centre. The latter was full of the most amazing Christmas decorations and effects, far more than when we had last been there. There were nativity displays with the traditional French « santons » (all kinds of different merchants and characters) colour themed areas, animals, snow scenes and even a waterfall. N ordered three fruit trees; two different kinds of plum - quetsch and reine-claude - and an apricot to replace the one that died, which were delivered a few days later. And right at the end we saw the resident black cat, asleep in her basket by the till; M had been most anxious to see her.
On Tuesday M and I took the bus to L’Aigle market, a little disappointing as there were far fewer stalls than usual, perhaps after the bad weather day before, or perhaps they slacken off before the lead up to Christmas. All the villages we went though on the bus now had their Christmas decorations up, including La Neuve-Lyre where there are some rather sophisticated shooting stars. It was cold and windy and we were glad to be home again in the warm by lunchtime. Monsieur A came to give us an estimate for the water purification system - less than half of the original one - he suggested we have it in the corner of the verandah behind the sink rather than under it, easier to start with and certainly easier in case of any future leaks. It will be nice to have Guillaume and Emanuel working here again, rather than a new engineer we don’t know.
M left on Wednesday morning; we drove her to the station at Conches, nearer then Evreux, and where the ticket office opens just in time for each train - most trains to Paris go straight though Conches without stopping, so we were lucky to find one that connected well with her Eurostar. N was amazed at the weight of her very big suitcase filled with Christmas shopping.
Since finishing the Lexique N’s latest project is the history of La Neuve-Lyre and La Vieille-Lyre, which have apparently had these names since at least the fourteenth century. La Vieille-Lyre was the site of a very large and important abbey, entirely destroyed in the Revolution. He has found a website of a young history graduate in LVL also writing his own account of the village; N has sent him a message but received no reply so far. There are also many history books on the subject which N is in the process of buying over the Internet; the postman calls frequently these days. I am more interested in learning more about the area as it is now, and am looking forward to a visit to Evreux once N is ready to visit libraries and archives. Apart from our very first visit there at the start of house-hunting, and the day of the house sale signature, all we do is go through the outskirts of the town and past the station on our way to and from Paris. N has also discovered the existence of a film made in La Vieille-Lyre in 1952 called « Le Trou Normand », memorable for possibly being Brigitte Bardot’s first film, also starring the French comic actor Bourvil. We have ordered a copy on DVD, and are looking forward to seeing it once it arrives.
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 9:28 AM 
