Wall [without logs]

We arrived at the house for Christmas and noticed that M. Milesi had started the new wall.  He'd removed all of the traces of the one that had been falling down for years.

It was a lovely wall, but we were terrified that one day it would fall on someone - not something we wanted on our consciences.

An upside of replacing it will be that I will no longer be nervous about weeding the garden near to the wall [in case my activities were what precipitated its collapse].

The footings were laid, and then we had a massive hiatus before the wall went up, owing to the cold, wet winter.

As we couldn't garden anyway, it didn't matter to us, but did leave us a bit nervous that yet another workman had started a job only to abandon it before finishing [I would say "once bitten, twice shy", but it's been more like a swarm of mosquitoes than a simple learning opportunity!].

So it was great to see a wall there when we went in March.

The last time we visited the house (a couple of weeks ago), the spoil had been [mostly] put back into the trench, and we had an invoice awaiting us in the letter box, so we know his work here is done.

The wall looks great: not pretty like the old one, but it matches Philippe's wall , so I think it works very well.

And David started going over the ground to shovel all the remaining subsoil into the gap.  Rain stopped play, but we're not far from finished.  Then we plan to relocate the compost piles to the gap to let it work its magic & fill up the gap.

We can't plant now until the autumn or next spring [in case the weather does finally turn "normal" for the time of year], so it should give us a good bed to plant into.

Now we just need to remove the unwanted elderberry bushes [I intend to plant "Red Lace" instead - lower down the bank, so not as visually intrusive, and with prettier leaves & flowers, but hopefully it will berry up OK]...

Wall [with logs]

We had a delivery of logs just before Christmas, which prompted us to finally finish cleaning the wall in the barn - I'd done about two thirds of it a couple of years ago, but the rest was hidden by timber, stones and other builders' detritus.  Now all of that has been taken to the dump or found a more permanent home, so there was just a few rotten beams to remove and get the steam cleaner out.

David did the rest of it, and it looks great - just need to saw up and stack some logs!

The new logs are much lighter in weight - we don't know what they are; they are great, and burn really well, but don't last anywhere near as long as the oak logs.  I think we're going to try to get deliveries of both sorts, if we can manage that without offending anyone!

We used a couple of pallets to create a flat platform [makes stacking them easier, and will hopefully discourage rodents from making a home under the pile?].

We've got it almost right - when the pile is empty, I'm going to move the pallets a little to the right so there is a perfect bin-sized space immediately to the left, which will free up the concrete slab again [it's very useful for putting our little "bar" table to use as a stand for cooking outdoors - neither David nor I like the smell of meat or fish hanging around for hours after a meal, and this place is perfect: under cover and with a power socket on the wooden pillar (L of photo)].

Now we just need a 'barbecue summer'!

Catching up snippets

After last year's wet summer (and not being able to weed, and then the weeds all seeding, and then not being able to weed - you get the picture?), a lot of our visits have involved weeding the garden.

This time around, the garden was relatively weed-free (certainly much better than most people's gardens I know; and they live next door to their gardens!), so efforts were focused on the potager.  We've got it all cleared, apart from the bindweed, and it was so wet that we couldn't spray that.  We're still having to use glyphosate as the roots are impossible to remove from the clay soil; couch grass, with its sturdier roots we're chasing them out, but the bindweed just breaks off.

Speaking of wet, the whole area is awash!

Our meadow is about 2' high already, and the garden is incredibly lush - they have benefitted from the almost unremitting rain - but the local towns have had dreadful flooding.  The Seine at its closest point to us is normally a fairly pathetic little trickle usually, hardly more than a stream, but this time it was a raging torrent and the neighbours tell us that levels have dropped considerably.

Troyes has had worst-in-a-century flooding, and even lorry cabs were flooded, so that must have been something to see.

The Canal de la Restitution, where they were enlarging the channel last year (they do manage to get infrastructure projects completed in what feels like, to English sensibilities, record time) was nearly full this visit; everyone in Paris will be having a lucky escape because of it.  They probably don't know that it not just supplies their water from the lakes in the Aube, but takes water out of the Seine to prevent/minimise massive downstream catastrophes

Speaking of infrastructure miracles: in the six weeks since we were last there, the N19 has been resurfaced over about five miles.  We couldn't believe how quickly work must have been done [despite having seen the same thing, repeatedly on the motorways (we justify that to ourselves as being because they are toll roads)], and to an English eye, it wasn't even bad enough to justify doing.  Come on England, start buying that better surfacing material we have been reading about!

[Apparently, one Japanese car manufacturer has built its own test circuit and had to create lots of potholes because there was nowhere in Japan or even in the rest of Europe that uses such poor quality materials that the roads are as full of craters as in the UK, and to test drive their cars they need a surface as rough as we contend with daily to see if the suspension can cope.]

Having intended to post at Christmas about how lovely and dry the house was (45° humidity, even on the rainy days), I now have to admit it's about 60° humidity owing to the unremitting precipitation!  Still way better than during the years that the hemp-lime insulation took to fully dry out.  I wrote in my liqueurs blog about not having to light a fire until 6.30pm on December 29, but the rain has meant that in late May we've been lighting a fire every day much earlier than that!

Not complaining about the moisture, though, as the dozens of hedging whips we planted between Christmas and the new year all seem to have survived, and I'm sure the lack on heat and baking sun have helped that process.  The hedge to the left of the pré is looking like a proper hedge now.

We've had apéros with Isabelle and her family, and had Philippe who owns next door round for beers, so having a bit more time on our hands has been lovely.

A final word goes to David [who was very pleased with his Christmas present of a cheese keeper (so it can be left to mature at room temperature without drying out/insect 'involvement')]: unleash the cheese!

The world didn't end*

Not that you'd know it from my silence!

I've had another winter of being unable to summon up the energy for posting/keeping in touch with friends.  I have been reasonably active [going to the gym/swimming/for walks], but haven't coped with 'mental' challenges.

I was so happy when the sun finally came out - just in time for both old shoulder injuries to reduce me to a heap of inability [now both are on the mend, thanks to Stephen my new acupuncture guru], aided and abetted by the wrist problem [seeing a specialist on Thursday, so hoping for some answers shortly thereafter].  Just starting to feel like getting "up & at 'em", when both David & I succumbed to the chest lurgy.  That laid me so low I couldn't do a thing; which was great because I finally rested all upper limb joints [no choice!], and am currently free from pain [which has made me realise that I was in constant low level pain with exacerbation, rather than (as I thought) intermittent discomfort].

Long & short of it, I'm taking it slowly [obviously until I have a need to go at it like a bull at a gate - adrenalin is a fantastic pain-suppressor!], and as David is managing a lie-in on this lovely sunny day, I'm catching up with some posting.


* The "Mayan prophecy" may [or may not] have had the world ending on 21.12.2012

Pierre Thielle stories

I think I’ve mentioned it before, but if not: our house is known in the village as “chez le baron”, because the eccentric old gentleman who lived there until his death (in the early 1980’s) was known as the baron.

We keep hearing stories about him – everyone seems to remember him with great affection – and I wanted to collect them together, so here are the few that I can recall.

• Neighbours have told us about le Baron’s diet: apparently, he used to cook up a week’s worth of food, and just eat leftovers for six days.  He also killed and ate fox/raven/crows.
• Another story told to me by several of the women who were girls in the village was that le Baron would offer a drink, and put out glasses.  Whilst he was in the other room fetching the wine [or stronger!], the girls would be frantically wiping out the glasses on their skirts to try to get them clean.  They ‘knew’ the alcohol would kill any germs, but still…!  Times change: I’m sure now that any older single gentleman inviting schoolgirls into his home and plying them with alcohol would be pretty sharply investigated by the police!  Then, I think he was just seen as a harmless eccentric, who enjoyed the company of children.  I’ve heard nothing to suggest that that wasn’t exactly the case.
• Claire and Marianne were telling me that le baron only used to use the door into the Entrance Hall, and never opened the other door, which went directly into his bedroom.  I think it was partly a propriety thing [gentleman living alone], and partly a generational thing [older people like their privacy more, and from previous generations you couldn’t even admit to having a stomach, so I’m sure a bedroom was even worse!], and probably largely a cleanliness thing!  Apparently his bedroom was dirty [now that I can believe!].  You were very welcome in his living room, but absolutely forbidden from entering his bedroom.  One time Nathalie climbed in through the window and got caught, and he grabbed her backpack and wouldn’t give it back.  So after that, all the girls were terrified of the thought of going in there.
• An old lady who visited the graveyard told me of the times in the war when he would hold “dances” [in direct contravention of the occupying forces’ orders] in the house – he’d blast out records on his gramophone, and people would dance.  I think it was a time of joy in some of the darkest days Europe had known, and this old lady remembers dancing when being taken there by her mother.
• Part of the “dispute” le baron had with the church [we haven’t heard of any dispute the church had with him, so suspect it was all one-sided!] would be to play martial music on his gramophone – with the gramophone out in the front yard during church services – at the equivalent of turning the amp up to 11.
• Pierre Thielle was buried at dawn, in the vineyards behind the house; he had no truck with the church [we live on the other side of the road to the church], and wanted to be quietly buried without any fuss or ceremony.  The day of the interment, the whole village turned out before daybreak and silently watched the end of an era. 

As it’s an unmarked grave, we’re not sure where he’s buried, but know it’s somewhere close by.  Occasionally when I’m out for a walk I look at the hillside covered in vines and wonder if a much-loved old gentleman is quietly returning to the earth there…

Wild flowers

"We visited the Haute Marne before deciding on the Aube for our house hunting.  We stayed in a little village near Chaumont, and kept driving past wild flowers wherever we went…  I fell in love.  It was how I imagine England would have been in the fifties, before agrichemical giants set about rearranging the face of the countryside!

“I’ve never seen (wild) orchids before, but now I’m nearly blasé about them.  And talk about cowslips!  We even saw some oxlips.  The verbascums are enormous, and seeing the giant yellow gentians or purple pasque flowers all along a roadside was amazing.”

I wrote the above, intending to post it when I found some photos, and then forgot.  It must be four or more years old, and coming across it unexpectedly has saddened me: it’s no longer true…

All the communes have started to “tidy” up their verges, and mow the grass really close before the wild flowers have had chance to set seed.  The places where I knew I could reliably find lizard or bee or pyramid orchids, or a choice of four or five smaller orchids, now have neat, tidy, boring and orchid-free grass, with occasional flashes of colour as if to emphasise how much we have lost.

I keep hoping the financial “crisis” will extend to saving some money on mowing the countryside, but it hasn’t yet!

[And don't get me started on "light pollution" from the street lighting...]

Sloes [and pig damsons]

Newly-collected sloes

It’s been a particularly bad year for sloes this year – in England I’ve have seen so few it hasn’t even been worth getting out a carrier bag to collect them – but we found two spots in France that had some, so the last time we were there we collected three bags full.  I spent hours washing and drying the berries, before stuffing them all in the freezer.  I didn’t have time to make sloe gin when we were there, and thought I’d rather do it when we next go back, than do it all in a rush.  Also my back was massively aching from all that sloe-washing and desperately trying to get the garden weed-free…

Some big, some little ones

There were some absolute whoppers, but sadly they don't seem very strongly flavoured.

The downside of that is that I’ve got masses of work in store for me on our next visit!

I love the blue-black colour while they still have the bloom intact

I plan to do a cost breakdown [so have been saving the time spent (several hours already, and not a bottle of alcohol has been opened!) and adding in the cost of the diesel in my book], which I think will be very interesting, and I suspect will prove that commercially-available sloe gins are a bargain.

Taste-testing proves, though, that home-made offerings are worth that time and effort!

My next great plan is a side-by-side comparison of liqueurs made with:
•    Gin
•    Vodka
•    Alcool pour fruits [grain alcohol, we think]
•    Whisky
•    Rum
•    Anything else I can think of [port, sherry, maybe]!

Hopefully, photos of the bocaux soon…

I've also got a couple of bags of pig damsons in the freezer to deal with, so I'm going to have one busy day with cold, purple fingers coming up...

Pig damsons

Cake out!

Newly released from the oven!

I've got the cake out of the oven, and the whole house smells wonderful!

And now I can relax - yay!

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas...

The cake has been in the oven for just over an hour, and I'm getting delicious spicy-Christmas-cakey wafts...

[The only upside I've so far found to having no door between the living room and the kitchen!]

Owing to last year's boo-boo in forgetting to take the recipe with me when I went shopping for a tin, I am once again making 25% more cake than is called for.  David doesn't mind at all, but it does make for a lot more mixing.  The non-maths part of my brain said a tin that's one inch bigger wouldn't need that much more in terms of ingredients...

But the left brain said let's work it out; so glad I did as we now don't get a flat cake!

OK, we've got one that comes nearly to the top of the cake-tin, but it looks alright.

And if it's half as good as last year, it will taste way better than alright!

If anyone is interested, I follow the recipe for Kirstie's Quick Christmas Cake, as seen on TV the last couple of years. She said it can even be made on Christmas Eve, which spurred me on to make one the year before last as is wasn't even that late when I started.

[Allsop, in case that needs stating!]

Last year I made is a bit earlier in December, and follow the directions she gave on television to cook it the following day if you run out of time.  It absorbs a fair bit of liquid (I use wholemeal flour, which probably doesn't help), so I added more liquid this morning, and a bit more before putting it in the oven when I'd got back from my yoga class.

Needless to say, I vary the ingredients - but mainly by adding more spices [cinnamon, ginger, vanilla extract, and more of the nutmeg and mixed spice], but that's a personal-taste-thing and no reflection on the recipe.  It's time consuming, but once the five-plus hours of making it are forgotten there's a lot more enjoying it still to come!

Oh, and I use Calvados rather than apple brandy, but you'd probably worked that out for yourself, hadn't you?

If I forget before then: Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Ingredients; all good to go!

Boil dried fruit in dry cider - yum!

Nuts...

...chopped

Cream butter and sugar together

Wand blender is great, but doesn't cream enough...

... my big-handled spoon made it much easier

Add grated orange & lemon rind, and molasses

Stir in eggs, flour spice, boiled fruit & chopped nuts

Double-lined tin, wrapped in brown paper; into the oven

Aperos with the Bernadette and Jean-Loup

Last time we were staying at the house, we had apéros with Bernadette and Jean-Loup at their house – she is looking very well, and her chemotherapy is working well so that her cancer is in remission.  We hope that she’s soon given the all clear!

The next day, Jean-Loup brought round a neighbour of his to sell us some logs – we think the next time we are at the house there will be a pile in the barn.  Fingers crossed they are as good as the ones M. Ruotte sold us three years ago – they’ve been brilliant.

The wood-burning stove is currently the thing I miss most about our house in France; in Maidstone, there is nothing to stop the heat going upstairs, and the landing is often the warmest part of the house.  The heat from a cast-iron stove is different; I can’t explain how, but it’s so much better [and because of the cast-iron, last much, much longer].

I’m already wearing a huge cardigan over my jumper, and a thick scarf, so I’m seriously contemplating staying in a much colder area to be warmer!!!

More snippets:

• Despite all the rain through the summer and autumn, the water level in the well is so low that we can’t use it…
• We saw a red squirrel cross the road in front of the car the last time we went to Troyes; cue squeals from the female of the pair!
• The house hassles of the last decade have left me struggling for energy and enthusiasm, but I took charge of the garden – I’ve cut back (almost) of the perennials/annuals in the garden.  I know I should have left them for the insects/birds, but I desperately needed to feel in control of something in my life – it meant that I could weed and tidy the garden before the “treading all over bulbs” season starts…  I have left more seed-heads than most gardens in our area have, so I’m not the worst person to have ever lived, but I’ve not left as much stuff as normal.  Hopefully, it’s only for one year!
• The potager is still “on hold” – we really want to eradicate the bind weed before planting it up, and to be honest, the last two summers wouldn’t have been great anyway!    We have repeatedly weeded, and spot-sprayed with glyphosate [not happy about that, but needs must when the devil drives], and it is looking much better, but the French chemicals seem very weedy this year; I think they’ve made them less potent as a safety measure?
• Is five exterior doors too many in (what is essentially) a two-bedroom bungalow?  We have two front doors, a back door, a French window out of the master bedroom, and a window that we can use as a door in the bathroom.  It doesn’t feel too many, but I suspect it may be…
• Alpaca socks: best thing ever!!!  If you have a chance [and like warm feet/cosy socks], buy some, they are so worth it!
• All the mirabelles (yeah, about a dozen!) were scabby – the hail storms compounded the damage inflicted on the tree by the winds and late frosts.  So no fruit for us this year.  Also no damsons, plums, greengages or walnuts, although the pig damson seemed unaffected by the weather…  Until we cut it down!  Still, the seedling is fruiting happily, so the line continues.
• We bought some thirties/fifties furniture – we’ve fallen in love with the stylised roses and curves.  We initially saw the potential when we stayed at a bed and breakfast near Dijon last year, and the lady had painted various old wardrobes which looked great.  So, we’ve been hunting exemplars that we wouldn’t mind “ruining” by painting – we’ve found one of two (I forget), but we’ve also found one or two (see before!) that are so lovely in their own right that they won’t be getting a dose of paint.  More stockpiling of furniture in the grenier; more waterproof tarpaulins, but you have to buy this stuff when it’s there – we’ve already missed the best of the Henry II furniture and while people are not valuing the 20^th Century future-classics it’s an opportunity to buy beautiful, well-made furniture that is way cheaper than IKEA.
• We found a stash of lumps of tufa!!!  Farmers throw it out of fields when they’re ploughing, and we have found piles abandoned so long they’ve nearly been re-buried by nature [so we know we’re not taking someone else’s carefully collected treasures], or in the ditches.  We [hope] reckon we’re doing a service by removing this waste-product, so emptied a couple of ditches worth into our trailer and took them home.  I plant them up with sempervivums, and plan to use them to delineate the edge of the drive, now that I’m starting to let the garden extend itself [absence of building-related vehicles means that the garden isn’t frequently being driven on].  Plan to get some more, but the weather is so soggy, it won’t be fun.
• I cut about 10” off my hair; David didn’t notice!

Michel, in the vines behind the house

 

Dijon Prenois

Beginning of September, we loaded the bike onto the trailer again, this time heading for Dijon, and the track at Prenois.

A swoopy bit

The weather was more mixed that at Magny-Cours, but thankfully was dry almost all of the time despite all the clouds!

Another swoopy bit

As it was another Eybis track day, there was another family lap, so I got to go round the track again [I had been round the last time we went] - I can't recommend that highly enough; such great fun, even at the incredibly low speed that they insist you do.

Well, if you don't have a pillion seat...

I tried to take photographs to show the undulations - it's a fantastic track for changes of elevation - but the pictures just don't do it justice.

This does not convey just how uppy-downy it is

I think I'm going to have to investigate to see if Eybis do a track weekend at Spa Francorchamps [with a family lap, obviously!], as I seem to remember that circuit being tighter and swoopier!

This is uphill and a sweeping right-hander

David had a great time, and I read lots of books [which = having a great time, in my world!], so I think we'll be back again there sometime next year...

We weren't last!

Let's hope that we get a proper summer in 2013!

David, up for action

Magny-Cours

One day in late July, we went off to Magny-Cours for a pair of back-to-back track days.  It was filthy weather most of the way there, and it wasn't looking good for David having fun!

Off on its trip!

We got there, and it was cold, wet and just plain yuk!  Still it might improve...

Hoping this is mist, and will burn off...

Thankfully, the sun came through for what felt like the first time in months, so much fun was had!

It was, and did; yay!

I particularly love Eybis' ability to make it fun for those of us normally left in the paddock/pit-lane...

Family lap

Family lap: a great chance to go round a classic circuit really, REALLY, slowly...

Possibly the slowest lap there, ever?

But as that's the fastest I'm ever likely to go, I'll take it!

Great fun!

Honestly, would you want to go round those curves any faster than 15-20 miles per hour?!

Thanks, Eybis!

I was ever so happy that it was warm and dry at that point, and it gave me a great insight into David's day.

Troy Corser, giving good advice

Troy Corser was there, and gave a couple of pointers to help the mostly-road riders handle being on track better - it all made sense to me, but as is the way of all things, those pearls of wisdom are now long forgotten; hopefully David has retained more!

Big Jim, showing off?

Stunt rider, Big Jim, was thoroughly entertaining, even if I don't want David to try to copy him!

Sculpture to Jean Bertigaud

I suspect it won't be the last time that we go to Magny-Cours!

Work has finished at the Mairie!

We had a lovely card inviting us to the celebration the Mairie is holding now that the work is finished there; sadly, we can't attend [prior engagement that weekend].

[You may remember that Jean-Marie was overseeing that project, and some time last year when David last saw the lady at the Mairie she was rolling her eyes at how badly over-run the project was!  So it's gone on at least another 18 months; we had a note cancelling the quatorze juillet meal last year because of the late running work.]

I'm glad for the Commune that the renovations are finished, but it's giving me another small glow of schadenfreude that we weren't the only ones let down so badly by the project manager!

Which reminds me: Jean-Marie sent a mail asking for the .pdf of the Photobox album I'd compiled of phase 1a of the renovations at our house, as he was applying for another job.  I don't have it in .pdf form [Photobox have it stored somewhere in the ether accessible through their website, which is where I updated it after we finished phase 1b], but I don't feel kindly enough towards him to send him a copy even if I did.

He doesn't understand the hassle he caused, and for the sake of clients everywhere, I sincerely hope he doesn't find work soon.  Every time I hear people advised that they should have employed a project manager when they relate tales of building woes, I just think "and make it even worse!", and thank my lucky stars that part of our lives is well and truly over!

And well on its way to being forgotten.