Monday, March 12, 2007
Sunday March 4 2007
Guillaume and his assistant spent all day Monday and Tuesday morning last week finishing off the installation of the water softener, the pipes in verandah, and very smart new tap in the kitchen sink; we were pleased we hadn’t replaced the tap when the new kitchen was fitted last year. They finished off by washing all the mud off the verandah floor! I think the new purified water tastes much better and clearer, especially when chilled in the fridge; so that I find myself wanting to drink more and more of it, which can’t be bad, but N isn’t sure he can taste any difference. Everything in the dishwasher started coming out cleaner straight away, and now there is no longer any need to put anti-calcaire tablets in the washing machine or distilled water in the steam iron, so the remainder of these can be taken to Saint-Denis and used there.
On Tuesday afternoon I set off for Paris by train, N having driven me to the station at Conches. I arrived reasonably early, in time for some food shopping in Saint-Denis. The next morning I spent a lot of time cleaning and tidying the apartment before setting off for more shopping; then, quickly going back inside for a letter I had forgotten to take to the post, I was stricken with horror as I pulled the internal door shut and realised that my keys were still lying on the bed! My first thoughts were that N had always said that this was such a complicated lock that it would take vast amounts of time and money to replace, so I left the outside door ajar and went to see the Gardienne. She said that if the windows had been open she could have got me in with a ladder (apartment is on the first floor) I said they weren’t as I had only just arrived, but she kindly let me call N from her phone; no good as he was out shopping for pieces of wood in Bernay, as I found out later. She suggested I went to see the man at the heel bar/key cutter in the next street which I duly did; he said he would come at 1.00 pm when the shop closed for lunch, and that it would cost 60 euros. I said I would come back and collect him; it was easier than trying to explain where the apartment was.
It was by then 11.30 so I filled in the time with interim shopping at Sephora and C&A, which I had planned to do anyway, and had lots of time to try on jeans (eventually bought a blue denim pair) and look at short quilted coats, of which there were not many, and I began to think perhaps it was the wrong time of year. As it got nearer to 1 o’clock I began to feel more and more sure that this door business was going to be a lot more complicated than the key man thought, and that I would end up expensively having the door taken off its hinges, and goodness only knows if and when I would get any lunch.
I’m pleased to say I was proved wrong however, and after only a few minutes of rattling at the door with a stiff piece on black plastic between it and the doorpost (we had seen this on TV recently) the door flew open. In reply to my amazement, the man said if it had been locked, it would have been a long expensive job, but as it was only closed, it was just the same as any other kind of door.
I gratefully paid him the 60 euros and got into the beautifully clean and tidy apartment and sat down and had lunch, very glad I had bought it the day before. Apart from the 60 euros the only other consequence of my misadventure was not going to the cinema; that morning as I had got so much done I had decided there would have been time to see a new film about Edith Piaf in the afternoon, but in the event did more supermarket shopping that had not been done in the morning.
After final cleaning and tidying and making up of beds I set off on Thursday morning to meet Madeleine & Caroline at the Gare du Nord at midday. In all the excitement I had forgotten it was St David’s Day until I saw M was wearing an artificial leek on her coat, but fortunately I had a large vase of daffodils back at the apartment! We checked their bags in at the left luggage and took the metro direct to Restaurant Chartier at Grands Boulevards for a large lunch and catching up with news, then on to the Passages Couverts where we spent a long time, especially in the toy shop and at Comptoir et Famille, where I bought a specially labelled tin box for N to keep his seeds in.
We walked from there to Boulevard Haussmann - I had never done it on foot before, but as I suspected it wasn’t far - and had an very nice tea on the first floor of Lafayette Maison. We did lots of food shopping at Lafayette Gourmet, some of it for dinner, and then set off home by RER, stopping at the Gare du Nord to collect the luggage on way home. Dinner was rather too much, particularly after a large lunch, and we were all tired.
On Friday we took the RER and bus 39 to the Grande Epicerie and Bon Marché stores as we had done last year, and spent time doing haberdashery and stationery shopping, food shopping at Grande Epicerie and having a picnic lunch outside in the gardens as before. We then took the same bus part of the way back as far as the Louvre where M & C took lots of photos in the sunshine, and as planned we went into the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, all rather weary by this time but enjoyed looking at exhibitions of medieval paintings, toys, chairs and advertising. We stopped for tea in funny little café off the Rue de Rivoli, during which time it began to rain. Afterwards we walked to the Avenue de l’Opéra and visited the Monoprix plus its food department, then took the train home, walking in the rain from the station. Madeleine had brought champagne to celebrate Caroline starting her new job, which we polished off quickly with no trouble, and had a rather smaller dinner than the day before, with time to watch some TV.
After turning everything off and locking up the apartment, we set off again on Saturday morning - all three of us with little black wheeled suitcases this time as I was leaving Paris that afternoon to go back to Normandy at the same time as they were due to leave for London. We took a surface train to the Gare du Nord and left the luggage as before, and then bus 43 to the Gare St Lazare, from where it was only a short walk to the Grands Magasins. Before we got there we made a short detour down a shopping precinct we hadn‘t seen before, and then went on to the large C & A where there was much more choice than at Saint-Denis and I bought a new short quilted coat; at the time I thought it was brown but sometimes now think it is green. Anyway, just the thing for this time of year, and replaces an elderly and worn black one.
Lunch - small and inexpensive by request - was at somewhere called the Croissanterie, then there was just time for a final look at the Grands Magasins: M & C to the toys at Galeries Lafayette, and me back to Lafayette Maison for a little storage jar I liked the look of. We caught bus 43 back to the Gare du Nord, retrieved all our luggage, and said goodbye and M & C went up to check in at the Eurostar terminal.
I went back to the Gare St Lazare - from where I needed to get my train back to Normandy - on bus 43 for the third time that day, much better than complicated metro changes, and with an interesting view and a long sit down. I had quite a long wait for my train, and unfortunately there is no café at which to sit down at the Gare St Lazare, only little kiosks. I was able to sit in the train for about half an hour before it set off however, and was glad of the company of George Sand. It was a slow train, stopping at several stations and for some time at Evreux, but there was a pretty sunset to look at; it gets dark at about 6.30 these days. N was there to meet me at Conches as arranged.
At my suggestion he had put left-over goulash and jacket potatoes in the oven, and afterwards I was able to see all the work he had been doing in the verandah: clever cupboards all round the new pipes, painting where required on walls and skirting boards, a new wooden doorstep for the outside door, and the lino tiles all arranged on floor, partly to see how they looked, and partly because they had to lay flat at least 48 hours before being stuck down. There will be no time to stick them before Wednesday, however. I was also able to inspect the new water butt and the ingenious hosepipe arrangement leading to it, and see that the Christmas tree had been removed, leaving a bare patch on the grass like a little grave.
Today has been spent catching up; unpacking, arranging new purchases and presents, washing and doing the flowers - I finally had to throw away the remains of my Valentine flowers, the roses had gone some time ago but the greenery was pretty. Fortunately there are now enough daffodils in the garden to pick a few for indoors, especially the miniature ones by the verandah door, which came from indoor pots bought last year. N had thoughtfully bought veal paupiettes for lunch which saved me spending much of my morning queuing at the butchers, and they were excellent with a good white wine sauce. After lunch we continued reading « Sir Gawain and the Green Knight » by the fire.
Saturday 10 March 2007
Last Monday morning we set off for Le Mans to spend two days with N’s friend Simone who came to visit us here last August; it made an interesting change to drive west instead of east. The main purpose was for N and Simone to play duets (violin/viola) and trios with a cellist friend called Maryse who came round on both afternoons. It was a sunny drive through an area called Perche and in particular a town called Mortagne, names I only knew from our house hunting research last year. Le Mans is beyond Normandy, but not as far as the Loire, in the Sarthe, somewhere in between. N had rather disparagingly said Simone had a little house on a modern estate, but it was surprisingly spacious with three bathrooms and several spare beds. It reminded me a little of my house in Ainsworth Street as both the front door and the stairs led out of a large main living room, with facing windows at each end.
We were given an excellent lunch, in fact ate very well for the whole of our visit, and afterwards Maryse arrived and they played Beethoven and Mozart trios while I looked at a couple of fascinating photo albums of Simone’s - music parties N had organised many years ago at his first Italian house Il Prato, and in his college rooms in Cambridge. Both intriguingly included furniture, china and pictures which are now either here in LNL or in Saint-Denis.
Towards the end of the afternoon after Maryse left the three of us went for a walk into Le Mans, as Simone maintained it was good to walk after music; I’m sure she was right and anyway we wanted to see something of the town. I had only visited it once before a few years ago with N en route back from the Loire to Paris, when he had proudly showed me the 14th century angel musicians on the ceiling of one of the side chapels of the cathedral, and we had lunched in a square opposite the Hôtel de Ville. We managed to see the angels again briefly just before the cathedral closed, and looked at various other old streets, the town seeming much larger than when I had been there before.
Tuesday was very wet all day; as we woke up we heard the rain on the Velux window of our cosy little bedroom and it didn’t stop until the evening and then only briefly. We drove into Le Mans in morning, and saw a lot of the old town and the ramparts from the car and then went a little outside the town to the Abbaye de L‘Epau, which had been founded by Queen Bérengère, wife of Richard the Lionheart; both N and I were surprised we had never heard of her before. It had recently been renovated - in fact the renovations were still going on - by a local equivalent of the National Trust, and Simone said that in the summer concerts and conferences were often held there. We were the only visitors that Tuesday morning and all the time were going in and out of all the different buildings the rain poured down and we dripped our umbrellas all over the stone floors.
After a welcome lunch at home in the warm - during which I discovered that Simone had also read and enjoyed the Life of George Sand - Maryse arrived just in time for coffee, and there was more music in the afternoon. I had brought a small piece of counted cross stitch embroidery to do while I listened, recently bought at a fascinating needlework shop in Paris, after I had decided it was time to take it up again after a gap of many years. I asked Simone about various pieces of similar embroidery framed on her walls; she said they were the work of her daughter, who lived a few houses away, so she phoned her and asked her over to meet me. The daughter - Claudie - brought her own current project, far more ambitious than mine and I explained that I was hoping to get back to that level! It’s a lot harder on the eyes than it used to be though, and really only works here at home under one of the special lights N bought for the musicians last August. I also discovered a very interesting and comprehensive TV and radio magazine called Telerama on Simone’s coffee table, the nearest thing I have seen here to the Radio Times, which I have since bought and enjoyed. And I learned a new verb I had never heard before, used by both Simone and Maryse - « bouquiner. » I knew the noun bouquin, a slang word for a book so assume the verb means to have one’s nose in a book.
In fact I was having such a good time that I quite forgot we were due to go home that afternoon, but after having tea and inviting both Simone and Maryse to come to La Neuve-Lyre for a couple of days to play quartets in May - hopefully with Brigitte, who was also here with us last August - we set off home at about 5 o’clock. The drive back to LNL was almost entirely in the rain. N was pleased as new water butt was full, but not pleased at the tap on it which had been badly fixed and was leaking. We hadn’t been back long before we received a phone call from Simone; Brigitte had been invited and duly accepted, so that is another set of visitors confirmed.
For the next two and a half days my main priority was the lino tiles, even though there were several other things I was trying to catch up with. Before starting on the tiles however, I cleaned all the windows in the verandah, both inside and out, some of which I regret to say had not been done since we arrived, and there were still visible paw marks in a corner dating from when Mme V’s kittens had been in residence. It was certainly much easier to do when it was empty though, as I was able to move the ladder round the room with me.
Because the tiles needed to be started at the outside edge in order to cover up a join in the old lino, and because the old lino was not completely flat, they didn’t fit together in some places as evenly as they should have done, not helped by the fact that there were lots of little corners and doorways, and by the end much cutting of little pieces to fill in the gaps, while all the time still keeping aware of the criss-cross pattern. By Friday lunchtime my knees were hurting and my nails were a complete mess! But it was done and is a vast improvement on the old lino. Most of this time N had spent planting several rows of potatoes and onions in the potager, after much hesitation and wondering whether or not it was too early.
On Friday afternoon we set off to Bernay, with three long lists of things required from Monsieur Bricolage, Vive le Jardin and the supermarket. Most important were more white mastic for sealing the edges of the lino tiles against the white skirting board in the verandah, and a « nose » to cover the step down into the back hall, more flower bed and rockery plants for the garden, and herb plants for both the windowsills and the herb patch in the vegetable garden. My pots of parsley, chives and mint needed replacing; the thyme, rosemary and sage were still fine. N was taken by an (expensive!) long-handled branch cutter he found in the garden centre, which he decided was just the thing for cutting new and superfluous branches at the top of the apple tree; this has since been done with great success. The garden centre cat was asleep on an old paper sack in a patch of hot sun by the till.
Sunday 11 March 2007
Since Friday afternoon the weather has been dry and fine and almost cloudless, and at times even warm! All the new herbs, rockery plants and bedding plants have been planted variously in the new rockery, pots on the windowsills or in the herb garden and the new large flowerbed. N has also planted 50 red and yellow gladioli corms in the « iris » bed, bought on a previous trip, and used some left-over old bricks to make a path between the iris bed and the main lawn. The lino tiles have been sealed round the edges and the furniture put back in position in the verandah; the sofa was put briefly out in the sun on the terrace and given a dust and polish, probably for the first time in its life. Because of the new water pipe cupboard, the sofa is nearer the door end than before, and so there is a little less space for the table and chairs, but not impossible, and their light pine colour looks particularly good with the fake « parquet » colour of the floor. As planned!
I have enjoyed being able to get back and spend time in my kitchen again, after variously having it full of Guillaume and his assistant, being away in Paris, and then on my knees in the verandah and have cooked a couple of meat recipes I haven’t made for years and - by special request from N - treacle suet puddings for lunch today.
Because the weather is so sunny and fine we thought we should go out for a little drive this afternoon - not even bothering to light the fire - and spent some time driving round little villages that are very close to home and which we don’t usually see because we are going directly to Conches or Bernay on some mission for paint or plants. Some were really small, only hamlets, but several had the same style of church with grey pointed spires, and a few even had shops and bars! We finished reading « Sir Gawain and the Green Knight » once we came back, over tea.
Monday 12 March 2007
Today N is cutting the lawns again, as they are so long and green and lush, and because we are going back to Paris tomorrow for a couple of weeks. He has spent a lot of time over the last few days inspecting the fruit trees and bushes for signs of life, so at least after a fortnight or so there should be something different to see. The other thing I am looking forwards to seeing is the boulangerie - it closed for annual holidays just after I left for Paris, and will open again in a few days, but we won’t see it until we come back after having been to Milan.
We have been watching our Italian TV channels in preparation for this visit, and I have decided to abandon George Sand temporarily in favour of an Alberto Moravia novel I studied at university; I shall take it with me to Paris tomorrow and begin reading it before I set off for Italy next Monday.
Guillaume and his assistant spent all day Monday and Tuesday morning last week finishing off the installation of the water softener, the pipes in verandah, and very smart new tap in the kitchen sink; we were pleased we hadn’t replaced the tap when the new kitchen was fitted last year. They finished off by washing all the mud off the verandah floor! I think the new purified water tastes much better and clearer, especially when chilled in the fridge; so that I find myself wanting to drink more and more of it, which can’t be bad, but N isn’t sure he can taste any difference. Everything in the dishwasher started coming out cleaner straight away, and now there is no longer any need to put anti-calcaire tablets in the washing machine or distilled water in the steam iron, so the remainder of these can be taken to Saint-Denis and used there.
On Tuesday afternoon I set off for Paris by train, N having driven me to the station at Conches. I arrived reasonably early, in time for some food shopping in Saint-Denis. The next morning I spent a lot of time cleaning and tidying the apartment before setting off for more shopping; then, quickly going back inside for a letter I had forgotten to take to the post, I was stricken with horror as I pulled the internal door shut and realised that my keys were still lying on the bed! My first thoughts were that N had always said that this was such a complicated lock that it would take vast amounts of time and money to replace, so I left the outside door ajar and went to see the Gardienne. She said that if the windows had been open she could have got me in with a ladder (apartment is on the first floor) I said they weren’t as I had only just arrived, but she kindly let me call N from her phone; no good as he was out shopping for pieces of wood in Bernay, as I found out later. She suggested I went to see the man at the heel bar/key cutter in the next street which I duly did; he said he would come at 1.00 pm when the shop closed for lunch, and that it would cost 60 euros. I said I would come back and collect him; it was easier than trying to explain where the apartment was.
It was by then 11.30 so I filled in the time with interim shopping at Sephora and C&A, which I had planned to do anyway, and had lots of time to try on jeans (eventually bought a blue denim pair) and look at short quilted coats, of which there were not many, and I began to think perhaps it was the wrong time of year. As it got nearer to 1 o’clock I began to feel more and more sure that this door business was going to be a lot more complicated than the key man thought, and that I would end up expensively having the door taken off its hinges, and goodness only knows if and when I would get any lunch.
I’m pleased to say I was proved wrong however, and after only a few minutes of rattling at the door with a stiff piece on black plastic between it and the doorpost (we had seen this on TV recently) the door flew open. In reply to my amazement, the man said if it had been locked, it would have been a long expensive job, but as it was only closed, it was just the same as any other kind of door.
I gratefully paid him the 60 euros and got into the beautifully clean and tidy apartment and sat down and had lunch, very glad I had bought it the day before. Apart from the 60 euros the only other consequence of my misadventure was not going to the cinema; that morning as I had got so much done I had decided there would have been time to see a new film about Edith Piaf in the afternoon, but in the event did more supermarket shopping that had not been done in the morning.
After final cleaning and tidying and making up of beds I set off on Thursday morning to meet Madeleine & Caroline at the Gare du Nord at midday. In all the excitement I had forgotten it was St David’s Day until I saw M was wearing an artificial leek on her coat, but fortunately I had a large vase of daffodils back at the apartment! We checked their bags in at the left luggage and took the metro direct to Restaurant Chartier at Grands Boulevards for a large lunch and catching up with news, then on to the Passages Couverts where we spent a long time, especially in the toy shop and at Comptoir et Famille, where I bought a specially labelled tin box for N to keep his seeds in.
We walked from there to Boulevard Haussmann - I had never done it on foot before, but as I suspected it wasn’t far - and had an very nice tea on the first floor of Lafayette Maison. We did lots of food shopping at Lafayette Gourmet, some of it for dinner, and then set off home by RER, stopping at the Gare du Nord to collect the luggage on way home. Dinner was rather too much, particularly after a large lunch, and we were all tired.
On Friday we took the RER and bus 39 to the Grande Epicerie and Bon Marché stores as we had done last year, and spent time doing haberdashery and stationery shopping, food shopping at Grande Epicerie and having a picnic lunch outside in the gardens as before. We then took the same bus part of the way back as far as the Louvre where M & C took lots of photos in the sunshine, and as planned we went into the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, all rather weary by this time but enjoyed looking at exhibitions of medieval paintings, toys, chairs and advertising. We stopped for tea in funny little café off the Rue de Rivoli, during which time it began to rain. Afterwards we walked to the Avenue de l’Opéra and visited the Monoprix plus its food department, then took the train home, walking in the rain from the station. Madeleine had brought champagne to celebrate Caroline starting her new job, which we polished off quickly with no trouble, and had a rather smaller dinner than the day before, with time to watch some TV.
After turning everything off and locking up the apartment, we set off again on Saturday morning - all three of us with little black wheeled suitcases this time as I was leaving Paris that afternoon to go back to Normandy at the same time as they were due to leave for London. We took a surface train to the Gare du Nord and left the luggage as before, and then bus 43 to the Gare St Lazare, from where it was only a short walk to the Grands Magasins. Before we got there we made a short detour down a shopping precinct we hadn‘t seen before, and then went on to the large C & A where there was much more choice than at Saint-Denis and I bought a new short quilted coat; at the time I thought it was brown but sometimes now think it is green. Anyway, just the thing for this time of year, and replaces an elderly and worn black one.
Lunch - small and inexpensive by request - was at somewhere called the Croissanterie, then there was just time for a final look at the Grands Magasins: M & C to the toys at Galeries Lafayette, and me back to Lafayette Maison for a little storage jar I liked the look of. We caught bus 43 back to the Gare du Nord, retrieved all our luggage, and said goodbye and M & C went up to check in at the Eurostar terminal.
I went back to the Gare St Lazare - from where I needed to get my train back to Normandy - on bus 43 for the third time that day, much better than complicated metro changes, and with an interesting view and a long sit down. I had quite a long wait for my train, and unfortunately there is no café at which to sit down at the Gare St Lazare, only little kiosks. I was able to sit in the train for about half an hour before it set off however, and was glad of the company of George Sand. It was a slow train, stopping at several stations and for some time at Evreux, but there was a pretty sunset to look at; it gets dark at about 6.30 these days. N was there to meet me at Conches as arranged.
At my suggestion he had put left-over goulash and jacket potatoes in the oven, and afterwards I was able to see all the work he had been doing in the verandah: clever cupboards all round the new pipes, painting where required on walls and skirting boards, a new wooden doorstep for the outside door, and the lino tiles all arranged on floor, partly to see how they looked, and partly because they had to lay flat at least 48 hours before being stuck down. There will be no time to stick them before Wednesday, however. I was also able to inspect the new water butt and the ingenious hosepipe arrangement leading to it, and see that the Christmas tree had been removed, leaving a bare patch on the grass like a little grave.
Today has been spent catching up; unpacking, arranging new purchases and presents, washing and doing the flowers - I finally had to throw away the remains of my Valentine flowers, the roses had gone some time ago but the greenery was pretty. Fortunately there are now enough daffodils in the garden to pick a few for indoors, especially the miniature ones by the verandah door, which came from indoor pots bought last year. N had thoughtfully bought veal paupiettes for lunch which saved me spending much of my morning queuing at the butchers, and they were excellent with a good white wine sauce. After lunch we continued reading « Sir Gawain and the Green Knight » by the fire.
Saturday 10 March 2007
Last Monday morning we set off for Le Mans to spend two days with N’s friend Simone who came to visit us here last August; it made an interesting change to drive west instead of east. The main purpose was for N and Simone to play duets (violin/viola) and trios with a cellist friend called Maryse who came round on both afternoons. It was a sunny drive through an area called Perche and in particular a town called Mortagne, names I only knew from our house hunting research last year. Le Mans is beyond Normandy, but not as far as the Loire, in the Sarthe, somewhere in between. N had rather disparagingly said Simone had a little house on a modern estate, but it was surprisingly spacious with three bathrooms and several spare beds. It reminded me a little of my house in Ainsworth Street as both the front door and the stairs led out of a large main living room, with facing windows at each end.
We were given an excellent lunch, in fact ate very well for the whole of our visit, and afterwards Maryse arrived and they played Beethoven and Mozart trios while I looked at a couple of fascinating photo albums of Simone’s - music parties N had organised many years ago at his first Italian house Il Prato, and in his college rooms in Cambridge. Both intriguingly included furniture, china and pictures which are now either here in LNL or in Saint-Denis.
Towards the end of the afternoon after Maryse left the three of us went for a walk into Le Mans, as Simone maintained it was good to walk after music; I’m sure she was right and anyway we wanted to see something of the town. I had only visited it once before a few years ago with N en route back from the Loire to Paris, when he had proudly showed me the 14th century angel musicians on the ceiling of one of the side chapels of the cathedral, and we had lunched in a square opposite the Hôtel de Ville. We managed to see the angels again briefly just before the cathedral closed, and looked at various other old streets, the town seeming much larger than when I had been there before.
Tuesday was very wet all day; as we woke up we heard the rain on the Velux window of our cosy little bedroom and it didn’t stop until the evening and then only briefly. We drove into Le Mans in morning, and saw a lot of the old town and the ramparts from the car and then went a little outside the town to the Abbaye de L‘Epau, which had been founded by Queen Bérengère, wife of Richard the Lionheart; both N and I were surprised we had never heard of her before. It had recently been renovated - in fact the renovations were still going on - by a local equivalent of the National Trust, and Simone said that in the summer concerts and conferences were often held there. We were the only visitors that Tuesday morning and all the time were going in and out of all the different buildings the rain poured down and we dripped our umbrellas all over the stone floors.
After a welcome lunch at home in the warm - during which I discovered that Simone had also read and enjoyed the Life of George Sand - Maryse arrived just in time for coffee, and there was more music in the afternoon. I had brought a small piece of counted cross stitch embroidery to do while I listened, recently bought at a fascinating needlework shop in Paris, after I had decided it was time to take it up again after a gap of many years. I asked Simone about various pieces of similar embroidery framed on her walls; she said they were the work of her daughter, who lived a few houses away, so she phoned her and asked her over to meet me. The daughter - Claudie - brought her own current project, far more ambitious than mine and I explained that I was hoping to get back to that level! It’s a lot harder on the eyes than it used to be though, and really only works here at home under one of the special lights N bought for the musicians last August. I also discovered a very interesting and comprehensive TV and radio magazine called Telerama on Simone’s coffee table, the nearest thing I have seen here to the Radio Times, which I have since bought and enjoyed. And I learned a new verb I had never heard before, used by both Simone and Maryse - « bouquiner. » I knew the noun bouquin, a slang word for a book so assume the verb means to have one’s nose in a book.
In fact I was having such a good time that I quite forgot we were due to go home that afternoon, but after having tea and inviting both Simone and Maryse to come to La Neuve-Lyre for a couple of days to play quartets in May - hopefully with Brigitte, who was also here with us last August - we set off home at about 5 o’clock. The drive back to LNL was almost entirely in the rain. N was pleased as new water butt was full, but not pleased at the tap on it which had been badly fixed and was leaking. We hadn’t been back long before we received a phone call from Simone; Brigitte had been invited and duly accepted, so that is another set of visitors confirmed.
For the next two and a half days my main priority was the lino tiles, even though there were several other things I was trying to catch up with. Before starting on the tiles however, I cleaned all the windows in the verandah, both inside and out, some of which I regret to say had not been done since we arrived, and there were still visible paw marks in a corner dating from when Mme V’s kittens had been in residence. It was certainly much easier to do when it was empty though, as I was able to move the ladder round the room with me.
Because the tiles needed to be started at the outside edge in order to cover up a join in the old lino, and because the old lino was not completely flat, they didn’t fit together in some places as evenly as they should have done, not helped by the fact that there were lots of little corners and doorways, and by the end much cutting of little pieces to fill in the gaps, while all the time still keeping aware of the criss-cross pattern. By Friday lunchtime my knees were hurting and my nails were a complete mess! But it was done and is a vast improvement on the old lino. Most of this time N had spent planting several rows of potatoes and onions in the potager, after much hesitation and wondering whether or not it was too early.
On Friday afternoon we set off to Bernay, with three long lists of things required from Monsieur Bricolage, Vive le Jardin and the supermarket. Most important were more white mastic for sealing the edges of the lino tiles against the white skirting board in the verandah, and a « nose » to cover the step down into the back hall, more flower bed and rockery plants for the garden, and herb plants for both the windowsills and the herb patch in the vegetable garden. My pots of parsley, chives and mint needed replacing; the thyme, rosemary and sage were still fine. N was taken by an (expensive!) long-handled branch cutter he found in the garden centre, which he decided was just the thing for cutting new and superfluous branches at the top of the apple tree; this has since been done with great success. The garden centre cat was asleep on an old paper sack in a patch of hot sun by the till.
Sunday 11 March 2007
Since Friday afternoon the weather has been dry and fine and almost cloudless, and at times even warm! All the new herbs, rockery plants and bedding plants have been planted variously in the new rockery, pots on the windowsills or in the herb garden and the new large flowerbed. N has also planted 50 red and yellow gladioli corms in the « iris » bed, bought on a previous trip, and used some left-over old bricks to make a path between the iris bed and the main lawn. The lino tiles have been sealed round the edges and the furniture put back in position in the verandah; the sofa was put briefly out in the sun on the terrace and given a dust and polish, probably for the first time in its life. Because of the new water pipe cupboard, the sofa is nearer the door end than before, and so there is a little less space for the table and chairs, but not impossible, and their light pine colour looks particularly good with the fake « parquet » colour of the floor. As planned!
I have enjoyed being able to get back and spend time in my kitchen again, after variously having it full of Guillaume and his assistant, being away in Paris, and then on my knees in the verandah and have cooked a couple of meat recipes I haven’t made for years and - by special request from N - treacle suet puddings for lunch today.
Because the weather is so sunny and fine we thought we should go out for a little drive this afternoon - not even bothering to light the fire - and spent some time driving round little villages that are very close to home and which we don’t usually see because we are going directly to Conches or Bernay on some mission for paint or plants. Some were really small, only hamlets, but several had the same style of church with grey pointed spires, and a few even had shops and bars! We finished reading « Sir Gawain and the Green Knight » once we came back, over tea.
Monday 12 March 2007
Today N is cutting the lawns again, as they are so long and green and lush, and because we are going back to Paris tomorrow for a couple of weeks. He has spent a lot of time over the last few days inspecting the fruit trees and bushes for signs of life, so at least after a fortnight or so there should be something different to see. The other thing I am looking forwards to seeing is the boulangerie - it closed for annual holidays just after I left for Paris, and will open again in a few days, but we won’t see it until we come back after having been to Milan.
We have been watching our Italian TV channels in preparation for this visit, and I have decided to abandon George Sand temporarily in favour of an Alberto Moravia novel I studied at university; I shall take it with me to Paris tomorrow and begin reading it before I set off for Italy next Monday.
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 7:23 AM 
