Sunday, April 01, 2007
Saturday M arch 31 2007
After arriving back from Milan on Friday last week we had just two and a half days in Paris before driving back to Normandy. N played a lot of his Tchaikovsky piano music; the arrangements of pieces from Swan Lake and The Nutcracker were especially good. On Saturday afternoon I went into Paris in the pouring rain to get a new colour cartridge for my computer printer (expensive but necessary) and to Bouchara where I spent a lot of time queuing up to pay for some haberdashery to help with the proposed white cushion cover. My most cumbersome purchase was a thin telescopic brush with ostrich feathers at the top - I had seen one of these before and thought it would be just the thing for cobwebs on high ceilings at LNL, then decided it was rather extravagant. When I saw them again though, I thought that there are going to be cobwebs at LNL for years, always difficult to reach and this was really the only way of coping with them. It was not easy getting the brush home in the metro (plus wet umbrella) without injuring anybody, but I did it, and am pleased to say that I have now used it and it’s worth every euro. It must be over 2 metres high, and when holding it upright I feel a little like a walk-on part in Anthony and Cleopatra. Could come in useful if we ever play charades here.
We left Saint-Denis in the middle of Sunday morning, and stopped at the Hotel de l’Ouest at Evreux for Sunday lunch, the first time in a long time but very enjoyable as always. This meant that when we arrived we could concentrate on unpacking and looking at the garden without having to think what to eat. Things in the garden weren’t as far on as N had hoped, but I was pleased with the daffodils in the urns, and we both thought the verandah looked very good. More daffodils were out in the garden, and also a bed of grape hyacinths.
There was a note in the post box saying there was a parcel to collect - as we had hoped - and on Monday morning we went to the Post Office to fetch it, ten sample copies of our newly published Lexique! We took five each, and haven’t really thought what to do with them yet, apart from leaving one ostentatiously on the coffee table in the salon. It was very good to see both our names on the cover, a real collaboration.
Also on Monday morning N bought lettuce plants at the market, and has planted them down the side of the vegetable garden, so they are easy to harvest.
After lunch we had problems with our TV set; no stations and a message saying there was an « anomaly » and giving us a number to ring. N said this was my responsibility, and my heart sank as such phone calls always seem to involve jargon, but after lots of recorded messages I spoke to a technician who told me various things to click on the remote control. This done I reported back; it was a problem with our satellite dish, the technician said. We thought we would have to call out our TV Installer, but N said he would try something else first - went outside and clipped the top of the very high bush in front of the dish - and all was fine! This explains why we have sometimes had the message before and then no problems at all a few minutes afterwards. Later on in the afternoon I had another Victory Over Jargon, and managed to get successfully into this Blog; after various jargon-explained access problems while at Saint-Denis.
I have now made the white cushion cover. As hoped, I found some white-on-white embroidery in an oval shape at the top of a sheet which I cut out and sewed into the middle of the round cover (made out of the rest of the sheet) plus the ribbon and binding bought at Bouchara. It is a little larger than required, but a vast improvement on the pink and green chintz.
We are both noting definite improvements in the refined water; not only the drinking water but the hot water too. There were too many soap suds in the washing machine, so I cut the dose down to one tablet; the dishwasher is still cleaning everything beautifully so I switched to a lower programme, and I also found I needed far less shampoo. Tea without milk is a lovely clear orange, instead of dirty brown with scum. All this is just as the original sales engineer promised us! For a long time after our rejection of his offer I suspected he kept ringing us; there were calls with no messages from a mobile number, and then one day while I was laying the verandah floor he rang trying to sell us a « special offer » . He was amazed when I said when I said we had had a purifier installed by a local firm, said there couldn’t be such a thing; I said it was the company who dealt with our heating and plumbing, and he was so completely lost for words he rang off!
I have tried out my new skipping rope along with the exercise DVD; it works OK in the grande pièce (doesn’t hit anything) but I am not yet able to skip for a minute without getting out of breath. Will keep practising! Also realised I have another new exercise DVD from Madeleine that I haven’t looked at yet.
I took some of N’s things to the maison de la presse to be sent for dry cleaning; the man said I should fetch them on Friday or Saturday as after that « it might not be them.» I wondered if there was to be some new collection system, so asked when I went to collect and was told that from Sunday the shop would be under new management! I think the couple must be retiring, so wished them well. Still no sign of anybody new at the traiteur, but I shouldn’t think the village can do without the maison de la presse.
On Wednesday we went out for the day, via Bernay towards Rouen with the aim of finalising the route our guests should take between the channel ports and La Neuve-Lyre. We went the usual way through Bernay and then joined the new A28 motorway; I took notes so that we could make a definitive set of travel instructions, both for guests in the next few weeks and at any time afterwards.
Having got round Rouen, and seen just the top of the cathedral from the motorway, we went on to Jumièges, where I had never been before, but where N assured me I should see the prettiest and probably largest ruined abbey in France. I think he was still a little annoyed that the former abbey of La Vieille Lyre had vanished completely, whereas at Jumièges there were ruins covering a large area, and the outlines of the chapel and other rooms and buildings were all still to be seen.
We arrived at about lunchtime, noted that the abbey was closed between 1.00 and 2.30, looked round the village and noticed a large restaurant closed, a smaller café closed down completely, leaving only a bar offering croque monsieur. Fortunately we caught sight of a sign to Auberge du Bac (Ferry Boat Inn) a few hundred metes down the road, got back into the car and found a wonderful timbered building, a little like an English village pub, looking over the river Seine together with a fine view of the ferry, which took cars across the river in a couple of minutes.
Lunch was excellent - salade niçoise followed by poultry in a good sauce and a very good red Sancerre. The weather was excellent too, sunny and almost warm enough to sit outside. We mused on the word bac, meaning ferry; there were various jokes about taking the ferry back, and N said if here were in charge he would have a whole fleet of boats naming them Johann Sebastian, Carl Philip Emmauel and so on ……..
We drove back and visited the abbey, very picturesque with two very tall towers filled with birds flying in and out and patches of yellow wallflowers growing high above the ground. There were remains of beautiful arches, and even a few very late frescoes; like the Ursulines and many others, it had ceased to be an abbey at the time of the Revolution and had been sold simply for the stones, then recovered and what was left restored some time in the nineteenth century.
There was a very good book shop - much better than the one in the Milan museums. N resisted several books on gardens, but we bought postcards and a book on Normandy desserts (not surprisingly many of them involving apples, cream and calvados.) I also bought a book on the chronology of French kings, something I have never been very clear about. It seems to be written for primary schoolchildren, but is nice and clear which is the main thing!
When we went back to the car it was very hot inside, in fact the dashboard thermometer showed 25 degrees (it had been 8 as we left the garage that morning) It continued in the early 20’s as we waited for the ferry - we had arrived just at afternoon tea break time; N looked at the river and I read about French kings. The crossing took only a few minutes and we drove off on the other side of the Seine, comparing it to the Rhine as we did so; a similar width but without the fairy-tale castles. I also thought about Flaubert’s « L’Education Sentimentale » where the hero meets the woman he will fall in love with, while taking a boat down the Seine from Normandy to Paris.
Going back through Bernay we stopped at the supermarket and began to stock up for three week’s worth of guests; potatoes, milk, toilet rolls plus ingredients for advance baking and desserts. I made a start on the advance cooking on Thursday.
Yesterday (Friday morning) N drew back the bedroom curtains and said there was a surprise - snow all over the garden. In the same week as Wednesday’s warm sunshine this really was a surprise. It didn’t melt until early afternoon and N worried about all the new seeds and plants, and I was glad I had done lots of washing earlier in the week. The weather is cold again today, but better is promised for tomorrow and Monday, arrival day of the first guests.
We have been wondering when our resident swallows would return to their nest(s) in the garage; N said perhaps we should clean up the nests ready for them, I didn’t think they’d appreciate that, so he said should we to hang out a banner welcoming them, but we weren’t sure which language to write it in. On Friday he thought he saw a bird flying into the garage, and today when we came back from Bernay yet again, (more supermarket and garden centre) I noticed fresh droppings on the garage floor beneath the nest, so think they have arrived.
Does one swallow make a summer??
After arriving back from Milan on Friday last week we had just two and a half days in Paris before driving back to Normandy. N played a lot of his Tchaikovsky piano music; the arrangements of pieces from Swan Lake and The Nutcracker were especially good. On Saturday afternoon I went into Paris in the pouring rain to get a new colour cartridge for my computer printer (expensive but necessary) and to Bouchara where I spent a lot of time queuing up to pay for some haberdashery to help with the proposed white cushion cover. My most cumbersome purchase was a thin telescopic brush with ostrich feathers at the top - I had seen one of these before and thought it would be just the thing for cobwebs on high ceilings at LNL, then decided it was rather extravagant. When I saw them again though, I thought that there are going to be cobwebs at LNL for years, always difficult to reach and this was really the only way of coping with them. It was not easy getting the brush home in the metro (plus wet umbrella) without injuring anybody, but I did it, and am pleased to say that I have now used it and it’s worth every euro. It must be over 2 metres high, and when holding it upright I feel a little like a walk-on part in Anthony and Cleopatra. Could come in useful if we ever play charades here.
We left Saint-Denis in the middle of Sunday morning, and stopped at the Hotel de l’Ouest at Evreux for Sunday lunch, the first time in a long time but very enjoyable as always. This meant that when we arrived we could concentrate on unpacking and looking at the garden without having to think what to eat. Things in the garden weren’t as far on as N had hoped, but I was pleased with the daffodils in the urns, and we both thought the verandah looked very good. More daffodils were out in the garden, and also a bed of grape hyacinths.
There was a note in the post box saying there was a parcel to collect - as we had hoped - and on Monday morning we went to the Post Office to fetch it, ten sample copies of our newly published Lexique! We took five each, and haven’t really thought what to do with them yet, apart from leaving one ostentatiously on the coffee table in the salon. It was very good to see both our names on the cover, a real collaboration.
Also on Monday morning N bought lettuce plants at the market, and has planted them down the side of the vegetable garden, so they are easy to harvest.
After lunch we had problems with our TV set; no stations and a message saying there was an « anomaly » and giving us a number to ring. N said this was my responsibility, and my heart sank as such phone calls always seem to involve jargon, but after lots of recorded messages I spoke to a technician who told me various things to click on the remote control. This done I reported back; it was a problem with our satellite dish, the technician said. We thought we would have to call out our TV Installer, but N said he would try something else first - went outside and clipped the top of the very high bush in front of the dish - and all was fine! This explains why we have sometimes had the message before and then no problems at all a few minutes afterwards. Later on in the afternoon I had another Victory Over Jargon, and managed to get successfully into this Blog; after various jargon-explained access problems while at Saint-Denis.
I have now made the white cushion cover. As hoped, I found some white-on-white embroidery in an oval shape at the top of a sheet which I cut out and sewed into the middle of the round cover (made out of the rest of the sheet) plus the ribbon and binding bought at Bouchara. It is a little larger than required, but a vast improvement on the pink and green chintz.
We are both noting definite improvements in the refined water; not only the drinking water but the hot water too. There were too many soap suds in the washing machine, so I cut the dose down to one tablet; the dishwasher is still cleaning everything beautifully so I switched to a lower programme, and I also found I needed far less shampoo. Tea without milk is a lovely clear orange, instead of dirty brown with scum. All this is just as the original sales engineer promised us! For a long time after our rejection of his offer I suspected he kept ringing us; there were calls with no messages from a mobile number, and then one day while I was laying the verandah floor he rang trying to sell us a « special offer » . He was amazed when I said when I said we had had a purifier installed by a local firm, said there couldn’t be such a thing; I said it was the company who dealt with our heating and plumbing, and he was so completely lost for words he rang off!
I have tried out my new skipping rope along with the exercise DVD; it works OK in the grande pièce (doesn’t hit anything) but I am not yet able to skip for a minute without getting out of breath. Will keep practising! Also realised I have another new exercise DVD from Madeleine that I haven’t looked at yet.
I took some of N’s things to the maison de la presse to be sent for dry cleaning; the man said I should fetch them on Friday or Saturday as after that « it might not be them.» I wondered if there was to be some new collection system, so asked when I went to collect and was told that from Sunday the shop would be under new management! I think the couple must be retiring, so wished them well. Still no sign of anybody new at the traiteur, but I shouldn’t think the village can do without the maison de la presse.
On Wednesday we went out for the day, via Bernay towards Rouen with the aim of finalising the route our guests should take between the channel ports and La Neuve-Lyre. We went the usual way through Bernay and then joined the new A28 motorway; I took notes so that we could make a definitive set of travel instructions, both for guests in the next few weeks and at any time afterwards.
Having got round Rouen, and seen just the top of the cathedral from the motorway, we went on to Jumièges, where I had never been before, but where N assured me I should see the prettiest and probably largest ruined abbey in France. I think he was still a little annoyed that the former abbey of La Vieille Lyre had vanished completely, whereas at Jumièges there were ruins covering a large area, and the outlines of the chapel and other rooms and buildings were all still to be seen.
We arrived at about lunchtime, noted that the abbey was closed between 1.00 and 2.30, looked round the village and noticed a large restaurant closed, a smaller café closed down completely, leaving only a bar offering croque monsieur. Fortunately we caught sight of a sign to Auberge du Bac (Ferry Boat Inn) a few hundred metes down the road, got back into the car and found a wonderful timbered building, a little like an English village pub, looking over the river Seine together with a fine view of the ferry, which took cars across the river in a couple of minutes.
Lunch was excellent - salade niçoise followed by poultry in a good sauce and a very good red Sancerre. The weather was excellent too, sunny and almost warm enough to sit outside. We mused on the word bac, meaning ferry; there were various jokes about taking the ferry back, and N said if here were in charge he would have a whole fleet of boats naming them Johann Sebastian, Carl Philip Emmauel and so on ……..
We drove back and visited the abbey, very picturesque with two very tall towers filled with birds flying in and out and patches of yellow wallflowers growing high above the ground. There were remains of beautiful arches, and even a few very late frescoes; like the Ursulines and many others, it had ceased to be an abbey at the time of the Revolution and had been sold simply for the stones, then recovered and what was left restored some time in the nineteenth century.
There was a very good book shop - much better than the one in the Milan museums. N resisted several books on gardens, but we bought postcards and a book on Normandy desserts (not surprisingly many of them involving apples, cream and calvados.) I also bought a book on the chronology of French kings, something I have never been very clear about. It seems to be written for primary schoolchildren, but is nice and clear which is the main thing!
When we went back to the car it was very hot inside, in fact the dashboard thermometer showed 25 degrees (it had been 8 as we left the garage that morning) It continued in the early 20’s as we waited for the ferry - we had arrived just at afternoon tea break time; N looked at the river and I read about French kings. The crossing took only a few minutes and we drove off on the other side of the Seine, comparing it to the Rhine as we did so; a similar width but without the fairy-tale castles. I also thought about Flaubert’s « L’Education Sentimentale » where the hero meets the woman he will fall in love with, while taking a boat down the Seine from Normandy to Paris.
Going back through Bernay we stopped at the supermarket and began to stock up for three week’s worth of guests; potatoes, milk, toilet rolls plus ingredients for advance baking and desserts. I made a start on the advance cooking on Thursday.
Yesterday (Friday morning) N drew back the bedroom curtains and said there was a surprise - snow all over the garden. In the same week as Wednesday’s warm sunshine this really was a surprise. It didn’t melt until early afternoon and N worried about all the new seeds and plants, and I was glad I had done lots of washing earlier in the week. The weather is cold again today, but better is promised for tomorrow and Monday, arrival day of the first guests.
We have been wondering when our resident swallows would return to their nest(s) in the garage; N said perhaps we should clean up the nests ready for them, I didn’t think they’d appreciate that, so he said should we to hang out a banner welcoming them, but we weren’t sure which language to write it in. On Friday he thought he saw a bird flying into the garage, and today when we came back from Bernay yet again, (more supermarket and garden centre) I noticed fresh droppings on the garage floor beneath the nest, so think they have arrived.
Does one swallow make a summer??
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 9:29 AM 
