Thursday, December 14, 2006
Monday 11 December 2006
Since we came to live in Normandy we have visited several places that we thought would be nice to go back to for Christmas presents, but have only managed so far to get back to one, to Verneuil-sur-Avre for the day last Tuesday.
Our main destination was the grocery shop called Vermillon, beautifully decorated and full of good things, but unfortunately not the particular presents I was looking for. However, N bought several things and in the « foreign » section we found cranberry sauce for our Christmas dinner. It was a nice surprise when they let us take home the red-lined basket we had collected all our purchases in. (It is currently under the Christmas tree with the first few presents in, waiting for more.) We also visited the large cheap store we had been to last time, a stationery shop for brown paper, a boulangerie and a traiteur. We had been unable to park in the square in front of the church as usual, and had ended up in a side street outside an interesting restaurant; this turned out well as by the time we came back to the car in the wind and rain it was about 12.30, just in time for lunch. It was a strange area, quite unlike LNL or Paris, and reminded me, as these Norman towns sometimes do, of small Suffolk towns. We watched passers-by out of the window and ate white fish with boiled potatoes and leek sauce - very comforting in the cold weather and an excellent idea next time we have a glut of leeks - followed by warm home-made tarte aux pommes and cream.
Wednesday 14 December 2006
As might be obvious, I abandoned any idea of taking part in the Saint-Denis chorale concert; I decided to not to go back to Paris for what I assumed would be the last rehearsal, and it was unlikely in any case that we would still have been there on the day of the concert - even if they hadn’t changed it! On Sunday afternoon I tried to make up for it by treating myself to an uninterrupted listening of the Messiah on 2 CDs, while following the vocal score, and singing along quietly from time to time.
This was made even more pleasant by the fact that on Saturday afternoon I had decorated the mantelpiece - a great thick, long wooden plank - with lots of greenery from the garden; plus a few candles, and that the fire was burning well too. I had been waiting for a fine dry day in order to gather enough greenery to make my Christmas wreath; having bought a base rather like a small straw life belt, and some pins, from the garden centre. I had never made such a thing before - always bought them from Cambridge market in the past - so made it up as I went along, with pieces of several different kinds and colours of fir trees, trailing ivy and orange berries from the firethorn bush, pinning them round as I went, and was very pleased with the result! It looks very good on the front door, just filling one of the square panes of glass.
Fine dry days have been few and far between, as winter weather seems finally to have caught up with us, and it is now dark most of the time, just as it was when we were first here in January. The few fine days we have had N has used to widen the flower bed at the end of the lawn known as « the rose garden » so that we have room for more cut flowers in the summer, as least that’s what I hope. We made a quick trip to the garden centre for some very late bulbs to plant in it - tulips, daffodils, narcissi and various alliums, plus a lovely Christmas rose. He has also completely re-dug the iris bed along the side wall and the bed along the front wall behind the enormous fir tree where some peonies and lilies lived in permanent shadow, and has replanted the peonies and lilies in the new wider flower bed, plus some of the irises. The others have gone back in the new improved iris bed, with far more space, and in various other places in the garden. He has also re-dug about a third of the vegetable garden - the same area which took him about two months last winter - while we wait for the last vegetables to finish. We have had some excellent Brussels sprouts, (looking forward to more with our Christmas dinner!) and a couple of late cauliflowers the size of tennis balls, and there are more celeriac and cabbages to come, plus some elderly lettuces.
Last week we managed to get all our Christmas cards written and posted, complete with computer printed labels for the first time, no mean achievement! After that my next job was the packing of N’s family Christmas presents; last year I helped him out as he was making such a hard job of it, and said I would do it all this year if he started early enough. Luckily, as I am visiting my family between Christmas and New Year, I don’t have any to post. N finished all his Christmas shopping in Paris last week, so we laid them all out on my study floor, he wrote the gift tags and I wrapped them all up; with Christmas paper first then made up three very large brown paper parcels with computer printed addresses.
The next day we staggered along to the post office with our parcels in such strong wind and rain that we could hardly stand up. The new post office door kept blowing open in the wind - it was supposed to shut with a magnet - and could only be kept shut electronically, not convenient when customers needed to get in or out. Our friendly glamorous post-mistress seems to have been permanently replaced by a much plainer unsmiling woman, but efficient enough, and she coped admirably with the opening and shutting of the door while processing our three heavy recorded delivery parcels to the UK. N asked me to fill in the forms as he maintained his writing was illegible - I hadn’t brought my glasses so it was a bit hit and miss, especially the spelling of CADEAUX. By the time we had finished there was quite a queue, all muttering about the inefficiency of the new door system. As we left we bumped into Marie-Antoinette, who told us the wind was part of a great storm over Paris, which we later saw on the lunchtime TV news. I then had to rescue my washing, which had blown all over the lawn.
On Monday morning we completed our Christmas decorations by buying a Christmas tree in the local market, nobly carried home by N. It is smaller than I would have liked, but in a pot, and although that has saved us wondering how to mount it for now, N isn’t sure about where we can plant it afterwards in the garden, already quite full of fir trees! It is standing in the salon in front the French windows, the shutters closed behind it for the duration, with the curtains draped either side and looks very good with all my decorations which were in store last year, and on a real live tree for the first time in about ten years.
Since we came to live in Normandy we have visited several places that we thought would be nice to go back to for Christmas presents, but have only managed so far to get back to one, to Verneuil-sur-Avre for the day last Tuesday.
Our main destination was the grocery shop called Vermillon, beautifully decorated and full of good things, but unfortunately not the particular presents I was looking for. However, N bought several things and in the « foreign » section we found cranberry sauce for our Christmas dinner. It was a nice surprise when they let us take home the red-lined basket we had collected all our purchases in. (It is currently under the Christmas tree with the first few presents in, waiting for more.) We also visited the large cheap store we had been to last time, a stationery shop for brown paper, a boulangerie and a traiteur. We had been unable to park in the square in front of the church as usual, and had ended up in a side street outside an interesting restaurant; this turned out well as by the time we came back to the car in the wind and rain it was about 12.30, just in time for lunch. It was a strange area, quite unlike LNL or Paris, and reminded me, as these Norman towns sometimes do, of small Suffolk towns. We watched passers-by out of the window and ate white fish with boiled potatoes and leek sauce - very comforting in the cold weather and an excellent idea next time we have a glut of leeks - followed by warm home-made tarte aux pommes and cream.
Wednesday 14 December 2006
As might be obvious, I abandoned any idea of taking part in the Saint-Denis chorale concert; I decided to not to go back to Paris for what I assumed would be the last rehearsal, and it was unlikely in any case that we would still have been there on the day of the concert - even if they hadn’t changed it! On Sunday afternoon I tried to make up for it by treating myself to an uninterrupted listening of the Messiah on 2 CDs, while following the vocal score, and singing along quietly from time to time.
This was made even more pleasant by the fact that on Saturday afternoon I had decorated the mantelpiece - a great thick, long wooden plank - with lots of greenery from the garden; plus a few candles, and that the fire was burning well too. I had been waiting for a fine dry day in order to gather enough greenery to make my Christmas wreath; having bought a base rather like a small straw life belt, and some pins, from the garden centre. I had never made such a thing before - always bought them from Cambridge market in the past - so made it up as I went along, with pieces of several different kinds and colours of fir trees, trailing ivy and orange berries from the firethorn bush, pinning them round as I went, and was very pleased with the result! It looks very good on the front door, just filling one of the square panes of glass.
Fine dry days have been few and far between, as winter weather seems finally to have caught up with us, and it is now dark most of the time, just as it was when we were first here in January. The few fine days we have had N has used to widen the flower bed at the end of the lawn known as « the rose garden » so that we have room for more cut flowers in the summer, as least that’s what I hope. We made a quick trip to the garden centre for some very late bulbs to plant in it - tulips, daffodils, narcissi and various alliums, plus a lovely Christmas rose. He has also completely re-dug the iris bed along the side wall and the bed along the front wall behind the enormous fir tree where some peonies and lilies lived in permanent shadow, and has replanted the peonies and lilies in the new wider flower bed, plus some of the irises. The others have gone back in the new improved iris bed, with far more space, and in various other places in the garden. He has also re-dug about a third of the vegetable garden - the same area which took him about two months last winter - while we wait for the last vegetables to finish. We have had some excellent Brussels sprouts, (looking forward to more with our Christmas dinner!) and a couple of late cauliflowers the size of tennis balls, and there are more celeriac and cabbages to come, plus some elderly lettuces.
Last week we managed to get all our Christmas cards written and posted, complete with computer printed labels for the first time, no mean achievement! After that my next job was the packing of N’s family Christmas presents; last year I helped him out as he was making such a hard job of it, and said I would do it all this year if he started early enough. Luckily, as I am visiting my family between Christmas and New Year, I don’t have any to post. N finished all his Christmas shopping in Paris last week, so we laid them all out on my study floor, he wrote the gift tags and I wrapped them all up; with Christmas paper first then made up three very large brown paper parcels with computer printed addresses.
The next day we staggered along to the post office with our parcels in such strong wind and rain that we could hardly stand up. The new post office door kept blowing open in the wind - it was supposed to shut with a magnet - and could only be kept shut electronically, not convenient when customers needed to get in or out. Our friendly glamorous post-mistress seems to have been permanently replaced by a much plainer unsmiling woman, but efficient enough, and she coped admirably with the opening and shutting of the door while processing our three heavy recorded delivery parcels to the UK. N asked me to fill in the forms as he maintained his writing was illegible - I hadn’t brought my glasses so it was a bit hit and miss, especially the spelling of CADEAUX. By the time we had finished there was quite a queue, all muttering about the inefficiency of the new door system. As we left we bumped into Marie-Antoinette, who told us the wind was part of a great storm over Paris, which we later saw on the lunchtime TV news. I then had to rescue my washing, which had blown all over the lawn.
On Monday morning we completed our Christmas decorations by buying a Christmas tree in the local market, nobly carried home by N. It is smaller than I would have liked, but in a pot, and although that has saved us wondering how to mount it for now, N isn’t sure about where we can plant it afterwards in the garden, already quite full of fir trees! It is standing in the salon in front the French windows, the shutters closed behind it for the duration, with the curtains draped either side and looks very good with all my decorations which were in store last year, and on a real live tree for the first time in about ten years.
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 3:37 AM 
