afternoon tea with my afternoon tea, tea set…..

blog 3 January 

 

 

 

Disney has come to Brevands and our ancient lavery in the centre of the village has been adorned with a period dress mannequin to demonstrate how things were done. Our only concern was that historically this lady of her day is wearing marigolds and I am pretty sure that 100 years ago rubber gloves were not available to the paysenne of Brevands to  protect their precious little hands. Still, good effort, and although our Madame de La Lavery was only on display for the duration of the Christmas decorations I think she is a stake in the ground for us other Brevands Ladies to  fashion ourselves on

 

Our lavery is rare in that it has a fire built into the surrounding wall with it’s own little chimney  to heat  the water for a whiter than  white wash and whilst the Marie has giving us a glimpse of life in past Brevands  and  how the lavery might have been, I think the crocks by the mock fire just about finished this museum piece off nicely and if nothing else it certainly made Mike and I chuckle as we drove past on our way to the Boulanger.

 

 

 

Beryl, the yellow peril is not well and a vibrating steering wheel after a contra temps with a curb when we were in the UK in September,  we thought it was time to have it looked at so up on the ramp she went only to  discover that her near side front wheel is buckled and needs replacing. It was then time to go to the customer services desk to start the,  oh so predictable intake of breath, shruggy shoulders and  friendly banter that you know is going to cost you a Grand at best…..OK it was only a quote for 600 Euro if they can match the wheel and the grand if we need 4 new wheels and tyres, it just sends Mike in a tizzy as he is helpless to  banter back but I keep telling him that even the French don’t duck and dive with each other,  this is the price,  or go somewhere else…..please sir…

 

 

 

 

 

With all the rain and filling up of our water meadows we were excited to see that the Brevands gardener is back on form and has started his chore of digging out ditches in the most straight and perfectly executed manner. The mud trenched out is neatly layered on the side of the ditch and the whole event is a delight to see. Mike and I have often remarked at what sort of person you must be to be happy to dig trenches for miles and miles at the coldest time of the year all alone up to your knees in mud.  A perfectionist and artist in his own right and then you wonder what he does in his spare time…….although he waves as we drive  by not once have we felt qualified or worthy of a stop and chat as he is a league on his own.  I did once collar him at one of our social events and was far too gushy about his fab trenches because that is just what he does for a living and he shrugged me off as an eccentric Anglaise.

 

 

Every day I try to do one big job in the garden. We are 2 years behind so it has to be a methodical and committed approach.  So I put on my best garden coat my gloves and set off with croppers, choppers and lots of energy to get the buddleia back in control and as I go I see plants that need pruning, tuning and plain old pulling out. The worst bit of this operation is the clearing up and at a certain point before the dew  falls or the clouds cover over the blue sky you have to make the decision to load up the cuttings into the trolley and dump them on the rough compost heap. This day I did 5 trips to the end of the garden where we dump our left overs and by the time I had finished I felt like I had put in 5 hours flat out in the gym and  completed all of my 10000 steps for that day…..

And finally a nice little story. In 2000 Mike and I packed up our family home of 17 years and moved into a smart marina house in Port Solent. It was contemporary  and modern and everything that our family home was not so as we packed I asked Mike’s Mum to look after this tea set that was a wedding present as I didn’t think these oldie worldly crocks had a place in my modern and upmarket new life. 14 year later when we were going through a few things when Mum died I found this box and blow me, it turns out that she kept her word and did keep it for me. A few years back our girls were doing a car boot and their nanny had given them a few things to sell and they mentioned an old tea set and I thought she may have forgotten this was mine and let it go, so I let it go, and thought no more about it but now it fits in our home and I am ready to invite a friend to have afternoon tea with my afternoon tea, tea set…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

well not quite mountains, but most definitely mole hills.

 blog 2 Jan

This is a very unusual photograph because I am working in the pond enclosure chopping wood and raking leaves and swanny is with me and is calm and happy to be sharing his bit of space. Mike and I decided that this year we must play catch up as we both feel we have had 2 years off and now is the time to get back on track and get our place looking good and feel active and productive again.  Sadly we are now two years older and a day grubbing out a persistent lilac tree and dealing with the left overs has left us sore and battered but as with everything the more you do it the better it gets

 
Every day I walk through the poly tunnel  after I have fed the hens and keep and keep eye on  my tender young plants.  I am at a crucial point because it  is  now that I find out whether they are going to make it or not. It is then so very exciting when I look into a wet and grubby pot to find bright green shiny shoots showing me that everything is good and the roots have taken. I am very glad to say that I have a good success rate so far and I am quietly optimistic that I will have plenty of young plants to start the season.

 

 

 

 

 

Mike has decided to make more of the pond area and we are looking to make a water feature that looks a little more designer than a farm pond with a grumpy swan on it.  A couple of weeks ago Mike found a lady selling gunnera cuttings and has potted them up to give them a chance to develop some roots before we move them into place and the purpose of the getting into the pond enclosure is to clear out over grown trees. It also gives us a chance to do a bit of wood collecting for the fire and that always feels good and wholesome.

 

 

 

 

Having spent the afternoon pruning buddleia and making sure all the left overs are cleaned up I trudged up into the hay loft and flopped into the sofa and asked Mike if he loved me even if I look like this and he said I love especially because you look like that.  that one little one liner is all the flowers and chocolates I wish for in a year.

 

The reason Mike was tucked away in the hay loft was that he was installing the karaoke machine that came  from a quick click on Amazon to have the machine purchased and delivered to us here in Brevands and that is only the beginning because then you have to have a TV.  A quick trip to our favourite second hand shop and we walked out with the biggest TV we could carry and that cost us 20 Euro then we needed a table and a trip over to the other second hand shop found a very Normandy style table for 30 euro and voila the singing corner is set up and ready to go.

 

 

And now Mike has set up the play station game as well so all our toys are in one place. Now Mike has the feeling that he wants to make the barn a little more secure and is eyeing up a door that has been kicking around for that past 7 years and will try to fit a new door and put a lock on it to keep the sheep out

 

And finally, there is trouble in the wood. You can ohh and ahh at big boy just looking gorgeous on his walk out but in the back ground you will see that there are very nasty looking brown lumps in the wood lawns and that means moles and moles need catching. It is now too wet to even think about going out to lay traps and clear up but it will need to be done hopefully when it dries out the moles and their families may just toodle off to next door but for now it just grates on our sense of tidy and clean to have these monster mountains of mud around our tree,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

make a start on 2014……. Happy New Year

An automated phone message came the day after the last blog to say that the gas tanker would be with us the next day. I then had to juggle the money and logistics of having the tanker dump a thousand Euro worth of gas in our tank.  In the pouring rain the tanker backed onto the drive and I had to explain to the driver that I only wanted half a load as I was not given enough time to get a money transfer over so he obligingly gave us half a load and much like when the wood arrives we had that comfortable feeling that it can now snow until March and we will be OK.  The driver left me a delivery note and drove off to his next ­customer leaving me with no idea how much I owe so  I looked forward to the invoice to notify me of the price  to make sure that the money was in the bank ready for the standing order that Butagaz insist on if you want to buy gas from them.  You can imagine my alarm when I checked the bank on-line for a completely different reason to find that Butagaz had taken their money without sending me notification…..mad ?…I was spitting feathers but Mike just looked at me and asked if they didn’t do this every year ? don’t I always have a gripe like this every time they deliver. He was quite right.  Butagaz upset me every time they deliver and like snow I am never prepared and will never learn that I need to call them and tell them to go away until I am ready for  them to make their expensive visit.

 

Our Hens were so pleased to have us home and as soon as I opened the poly door they ran in like possessed poultry and hunkered down into the dry mud and cooood and clucked in a huddled group until they had completed their beauty program.  One of my girls is behaving and we have had one egg a day since coming home and for that I am grateful.

  

 

 

 

 

Mike and I found a few jobs to do  in the poly and HOSS just keen to be with us found a dry spot out of the wind and rain to watch over our activities and be a gorgious and attentive doggie. The cat and the Hens just carry on around him and at one point we were all in the poly and it just made us chuckle at the harmony we manage to surround ourselves with…without trying.

 

And then it was New Year’s Eve all over again and this year we were rescued from needing to keep the sofa from escaping by friends Trevor and Carol who called to say they were having a bash and we were cordially invited. We set off at 5:30 in the camper to park up and stay over. As we trundled along the N13 we were aware that cars overtaking us were flashing and waving at us so we pulled over to discover that we had no lights showing except the number plate light and on such a blustery wet night we decided to go home on the intensity rear lights. I was ready to abandon our night out but once mike has a fault to find he is unstoppable.  We then started scrabbling through the French owner’s manual to try to suss out what they might call the back lights fuse and where it could be.  You might think we were looking  for feux arriere , but no, they were marked up as feux de possition , oh my goodness it took us an hour to find that out by elimination. I called our hosts to say we might not make it but mike decided we had until midnight to get there so off we set out again. Three hours after others had dutifully turned up we got dressed in our best bib and tucker as the dress code was very smart and I smeared  a little makeup on and Mike put his blazer and tie on. We felt great and stepped out to have a good time.

The Karaoke machine came out and as Trevor and Carol are ex pub landlords  were  specially skilled at getting us all up to sing our hearts out , even Mike got up to do a group song with the blokes and frankly though it was appalling singing,  it was a lot of fun. 

 

We did the French bon annee at French midnight and filled our glasses with champagne again an hour later for the English midnight and we would have gone on all around the world but that can get complicated.  At 2:30 we all traipsed over to Trevor and Carols neighbours who were having their reveillions and were all sat at the table with the main course just finished at 2:30. We all wished each other happy new year and at 3:00 we sat down with them and shared their dessert. I did whinge a little and say that I could not possible eat at 3 in the morning but the French have an uncanny way of suggesting they would be very offended if we turned them down so we ate ice cream washed down with white wine and I sat at the top of the table and Mike and the other end of the table until I could not make any more small talk and our hosts wanted to dance. It was at that crucially embarrassing moment that Mike and I made our excuses and went back to the camper to apologise to HOSS for leaving him unattended for so long and then we cuddled up in our camper sleeping pod until 11:00 on New Year’s Day.  We woke up to a serious storm and whilst our hosts slept off their fabulous party we broke camp and came home to get the calendar up and the diaries updated the fire lit and make a start on 2014……. Happy New Year

 

 

 

 

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