but that is progress for you…….

blog 32 / November

There is no going back, we are here to stay, and we are French to the core, never to go back to the UK. This week we gave up the white van with net curtains for a smart Renault espace and that means we are French, French, French…  and, on top of all that, we actually bought it through le bon coin and got a good deal…..no car salesmen to take us to the cleaners this time.  Mike has been very frustrated these past few months because I am now totally deaf on my left side and unable to hear him talking to me in our bumpy jangling, rattling van and as we do all our best talking on the road it was starting to have an impact on our decision making. I have been able to turn a deaf ear to Mike’s ranting’s about the quality of roadmanship on our roads here but not hearing road rage in its most colourful sense is no compromise to not being able to pick up a conversation, so the van had to go. Much of the decision making for what to get next was down to HOSS and how he would manage getting in and out and the espace has a very low back door so we are all happy, HOSS can get in the back, I can hear what’s going on and Mike has a new toy to play with …….life is great

We took a walk around Carentan in the week and as we passed the 100 year old angel in the centre of town  naming all of those mort pour la France,  I noticed that our lady had a new wing.  Mike and I had the discussion years ago about when she may have lost her wing and came up with a great story about the band of brothers crashing through the town, taking it over and making a mess in 1944 and then thought nothing more of it and now we see without any pomp or circumstance in the year of the 100 anniversary of her purpose a new wing has appeared and I am delighted for her and all those who care enough to notice.

The weather is still good and we have been able to keep up with all those messy and ‘must do’ jobs to put the garden to bed for the winter. This week we lifted the dahlia garden and packed the tubers away to sleep and recoup until spring next year. We made a huge planting error and put too many Dahlias is this area as it was designed to be a rose garden with a smart box hedge around it but it became a mad and gorgeous bed of blooms, looking good, but totally in the wrong place so we have decided to lift them, label them, and be a lot more intelligent about where they go next year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I was in the poly tunnel pottering when I heard a very weird sound that I could not identify and now that I have impaired hearing I was forced to go out into the garden to investigate only to find Mike with camera in hand investigating the same noise and we found our wood full of starlings having a party up in the tree tops, and then they were gone in a flurry off to the next venue but Mike did manage to catch them before they moved on and then all was quiet again

 Mike and I try to get out every day and when the weather holds we like to take HOSS for a walk somewhere. His favourite place is the beach and last week we pulled in to say hello to our good friends in St Marie Du Mont on the way back from Utah Beach make our outing even more special, but we also walk the old rail way lines that have been given over to walkers, bike riders and dogs.  We have a good choice of walks and I find I am able to get a bit of a wiggle on and get the heart pacing and Mike can walk without watching out for ankle turning obstacles, which has always impaired his walking outings ever since I have known him

We set off on the railway walk at a joining point away from town so it is less crowded and although we have past this house many times I just felt a need to show you this little railway holt that would have housed the family who watched the road and closed the gate when the train chuffed past.  I would buy this house and live in it if I ever had the chance, it is in the country but is only a 5 minute bike ride away from Carentan. We talked about how it would be to live on an old rail way line with all the history and ghostly middle of the night chuffing and hooting as the midnight mail train trundled past on its way to Lessey in our dreams. We imagined finding the platform and putting up signals and opening a little cream tea café  for the  people passing by , then we got real, noticed there was no one as far as the eye could see and got on with the walk  for the fresh air and exercise it was intended for.

 

 

And finally an update on the windows project or did I mean protest. This is not an easy job and these here were the worst of them all.  Mike renewed the putty whilst they were still hanging a couple of weeks ago and that has made the prep and paint process a lot easier and less stressful.   We need to get two coats of top coat on in the next two days and they can go back up. Mike is puttying in advance and I am cleaning so that when they get to the table it’s just sand, paint and sand and paint, and then, job done.  We bought a Karcher window cleaner and the house has more light and shiny reflections now as a gadget goes a long way to helping you perform the simplest of jobs which actually if you put your mind to it was just as easy before  the gadget, but that is progress for you…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

important duties all day, and all night.

blog 31 / November

We are now well under way with the window painting project and the past 7 days has been one of optimism that turns to despair as the job of preparing these windows for painting roller coasts from the logic to the ridiculous. So we took the windows out of the frame and put a board in the hole. We sanded, putted, sanded, undercoated, sanded,  top coated, sanded, second top coated both sides. We have secondary glazing panels on the inside to close and clean and this morning on day 8 we put the windows back in their place.

 

And very good they look too, except that the secondary glazing panels were closed too soon and got stuck to the new paint, then the windows would not shut well and the tape we used to stop us painting the glass leaked a bit and the putty did not like being painted straight away, so, all in all, we wished, for a mega second, that we had got the professionals involved. We had a coffee at the board room table in workshop 5 and made a new plan where we will replace putty in situ to allow a good drying period before we paint. We will not do both sides but prepare and then paint the inside when they go back up and we can leave the secondary glazing open for a week…..are you all bored yet, because we are terminal, but the money we save will give us the spare to get on a plane to Canada for a visit next year, that is the motivation…….

 

 A little catch up with the whacky ducks and as you can see they are eating out of Mikes hands. The big girl on her own is one of our originals bought from Carentan Market in the first week we moved to Brevands in August 2007. She lost her mate years ago but she was happy to play with her girly playmate and the swan, who have both died this year. We thought she was probably on her own last legs but the arrival of this happy bunch has given her a new lease of life and she runs in and out of the pond coming up behind her quacking clutch. She does come forward to feed out of the bowl but she is very fussy about who is watching.

 

I decided that this year we would let the chickens have the poly tunnel as their winter quarters but now that I have the poly doors repaired and looking smart I did not want to leave them open in the wind and rain, so Mike cut me out a new little door just for the chickilicks so they can come and go as they please and if we should get some extreme weather, then they can bunk down in there and live their lovely stress less lives as normal. I hope they appreciate the efforts we make to keep them content and laying us a couple more eggs a day might be a nice way to say thank you..

 

 

 

 

Although the temperature is still above the seasonal average it does not mean we can sit on our hands and we have been busy closing down the gardens and putting all the delicate plants in a place where, should we get a spell of freezing, keep them protected. Now that the hens have the run of the poly I have had to think like a hen and protect the plants from curious, pecky and scratchy type interest by making hen proof enclosures.

 

I am still working on my cushion making hobby  and  have dedicated one day a week, called sewing Wednesday to  lose myself in my sewing room catching up with all the cushions I promised I would have done before I start my  on line shop. The problem is that I love all of these cushions and  I actually don’t want to let them go but I have twice as many tableaus waiting to be made up and only one sofa to put them on, so they will have to go sooner or later…….or Mike might have to leave home as the sofa is his place …mmmmmmxx

 

 

I have become so interested in these needlepoint tableaus that I bought myself a kit to work on throughout this winter. I will never be able to let this one go, it is such a great picture of HOSS that it will stay on the sofa, along with my mandarin duck and cat cushions that got this interest in needle point tableaus started

 

And finally, how quickly the winter sets in and we get into the cosy and well-rehearsed routines of winter. We changed the front doors so that we now come in through the lobby to keep the cold draft out of the kitchen and we light our fire every day. HOSS knows where he needs to be and operates his Head Of Site Security protocols from this vital location in the house, laid out in front of the fire.  He is very flexible and the command ‘upup’ gets him on his feet whilst we tend the fire then he settles down again to perform his very important duties all day, and all night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

pumpkin in a champagne bucket and he’s called Pumpkin Bob

blog 30 / November

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the new pond area, calm and interesting with a place to sit and look at the house, watch the ducks play and contemplate our next project. Here I am with sister Mim catching up and getting close. Mim and Dick get over to us as often as they can and it is always great to have them here, to sit and chew the cud over family news and share our plans and expectations.

 

 

 

Brother Billy took this special effect picture of the pool and it makes me chuckle. I have always thought the pool is a great big blue blot on the landscape, but, when the weather is good, it is the best thing we have every done in the garden. Our season here is so short and we do wonder if it is worth the effort, but this year has been a bumper swimming year and we are very pleased we made that effort

 

Then autumn sets in and the leaves have fallen in the wood and it is time to deflate, roll up and enjoy the garden vista without our blot in the way. Mike  spent a month checking the quality of the water until there was no trace of chlorine and the ph was normal and then he spend days emptying the water into the pond. We have done this before and are  constantly entertained at the behaviour of the ducks at the outlet, they sense this water is different and spend all their time washing and preening. We were then rewarded with a bright sunny day at the point of emptying the pool and the drying, wiping and folding up was done in a morning and the pool area was back to winter mode without worry and weather interruption.

 

 

This growing season has been dominated with the pumpkin competition and finally it all came to fruition and our day of reckoning came on Halloween. We all met at Shirley and Marks for the judging and giving of prizes.  A feast was laid out on their kitchen counter and we all presented our harvest but I did feel that Trevor,  dressed in a blow  up pumpkin was just pushing the boundaries of the rules a little, but we forgave him, as he made us laugh and took the horticultural edge off the event

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was delighted to have won first prize for carved pumpkin that I called ‘pumpkin food chain’ because it became a bit of an art form by the time I had finished it. I also won best in show, so for me it was accolades all around and I did make a good speech declaring that it is not the taking part  that counts , it’s the winning……….

 

 

 

 

 

 

and what a great time we had,  31st October with the sun out and the wind warm in our faces, we could have guessed we were in the south of France, but I was lead to believe it was not that good down there that day

 

 

The time has come to seriously do some house care and the windows have haunted me in the middle of the night for the past three years.  I promised myself that whilst I was working I would get a chap in, who does, and have all the windows renovated and spruced up but in the upheaval of the job and the inability to make any proper decisions about what needs to be done and what doesn’t we missed the boat completely. Here we are now with our windows looking very sad and on the verge of beyond repair.  The thought of this immense job put Mike in a, run for the hills mood, so we got a quote to have all the windows and doors replaced and that came in at 14.000 Euros, so we then got a quote for a painter to come and paint the outsides and that came in at a cool 4.000 Euro. We have therefore picked up the gauntlet and made the spare room into workshop number five and we are, together, going to paint, renovate the in and outsides of 11 windows,  frames and two doors.  We estimate that we have 12 weeks work and that will take us to spring so this winter will be done and dusted and our house will have a smart look for 2015

 

So if you were wondering what we do with all that Pumpkin…Pie was tried and dismissed the carvings decorate the front of the house and just add colour and then the hens are given a harvest feast.  I have left them two large fruit open wide so they can climb in and enjoy.

 

 

 

And finally we must not forget Mike’s entry in most unusual category. This is a floating pumpkin in a champagne bucket and he’s called Pumpkin Bob………..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to be surrounded by lovely people all over again …….

blog 29 / October

I broke the news to Mike that the Poly tunnel needed closing and that meant a huge ‘mend’ job on the doors. We took the doors off in the spring in a tattered and sorry state and thought we had months to think about how to get them back into working order for the winter, and blow me down here we are already. Mike set to, as he does, clonked and bashed away whilst I was picking and prodding at the beds and in a morning’s work got the poly back together. Now all we need to do is re-cover it completely and we have months to go before spring, when that job will need to be done, and before you know it ….!!!!!!!






I know I have been bleating on about the odd unseasonal sequence of growth in the garden this year but a gladioli in flower on the front drive on October 16^th is ridiculous……but lovely. My only fear is that this bulb is now spent and will not make it into flower again next year, but I will just have to keep an eye on it and keep you informed.

 

 

It was my turn to celebrate my 60^th birthday and I wanted to sit around my table in the kitchen and just be with friends and that is exactly what we did. A very sing song evening not all in great tune but a funny and rowdy night is the only way to start the next phase of one’s life, and I was delighted especially as Mim and Dick had made the trip from the UK to be with us as well

 

Mark came with his violin and after a little home spun concert between us we sang ditties and told jokes and I laughed till I cried. Thank you all my friends for making a difficult birthday, for a lady, seem like a walk in the park……

 

 

And then after a day of rest I was sat in the garden with Shirley and Mark just passing by to say hello when a car rolled onto the drive and I stood up saying oh flip…. who could that be……..I had the surprise of my life to see our boy Chris get out of the driving seat and brother Billy closing the gate behind them. Chris, Sam, Billy and Maxine had started off at 5:00 that morning to take the channel tunnel and drove all the way to my house to take me out to dinner for my birthday. It was not good enough that I had Mim and Dick with us for the week now we were a family gathering and I was touched to the bottom of my heart that everyone around me including Mike had been plotting and organising to give me such a wonder full surprise.

 

 

I was whisked off to Grandcamp Maisy for a fab meal thanks to Billy and then everyone just went to bed, and I  realised just how much Mike had been up to, cleverly getting the spare room ready and warming up the camper so everyone had a warm bed.  Sam did make a comment that Napoleon the cockerel had to die, they were very tired and we all know that Napoleon starts his cockadoodling at 4:30 in the morning, and knowing we had guests made sure he was in full voice for the occasion.

 

 

 

Before I could appreciate the impact of this group of very special people being in our home for my birthday it was all over and the house was quiet and empty and ringing with the sound of happy people doing wonderful things for me. Mike was a brick and made sure there was no way I was going to miss my surprise but  I am now on my guard, as I don’t know what he is capable of in terms of lies and deceit, but  I love him to bits  for making  it happen. I am also amazed that Mim and Dick were able to keep their lips tight shut and not let the cat out of the bag and I am just delighted that this birthday was made extra special despite living on the other side of the channel…….

 

To avoid the sound and feel of an empty house,  I had planned  to get away for a few days in the camper. Every time we have company I go into a melancholy state and I am so glad I anticipated this trip as I was on a double dose with all our friends and family there one moment and gone the next. So we set off for a trip to Chatres to rediscover a bit of art I saw 10 years ago on our long leave trip of Europe

 

When we got to the cathedral I was reminded of the architectural marvel but was more excited about the choir screen that I had seen all those years ago and never really understood what I had I been looking at. I did my research so I more understood when in front of it again, and Mike walked me around the 40 sculpted deep relief panels dating from 1510 to 1720 twice. The rest of the cathedral is in the midst of a very French style restore and I took this pic to show the beautiful ceiling and vaults and the screen section already restored and I now await with bated breath for the screen to be cleaned and restored  like the rest of the building. Mike is a bit of a groupie as he has to follow me anywhere there is a statue as I am a complete nutter for an ancient figure in any medium as long as it is telling an ancient story ………

 

 

 

We took the guide book’s advice and found our way to a street where an artist had been let free to create this trompe d’oeil as they call it. The entire front of this building is painted and the windows were very convincing. We stood in front of it for ages and it seemed to me we were the only ones looking up but I guess it is out of season and the people passing by see it every day

 

 

Mike and I are discovering that driving through France is a hit and miss event. You just don’t know what is around the next corner and as all the regions only deal with what is in their region anything we picked up in Chatres office of tourism would not advertise interesting sites to see next door. As we approached our third way point on the gps on our way to Villiers Bocage we noticed a huge wall that seemed to go on for many kilometres and we became more and more curious about what might be behind such a wall, as  it went  the village of La Fert Vidame and out the other side until suddenly the road opened up and to our left was the ruin of a palace. The gardens were still outlined, the water features in place. We drove past but we knew we had to go back and parked up to take a look and this palace that had been derelict since the French revolution. In the 1920’s Mr Citroen bought the estate and built his development track in the grounds……well we were so very excited about this find that when we got home we goggled the village and found that this pocket of amazement is a public park open all year and just around the corner is a camp site that is closed now until May, but guess where we will be going as soon as the season starts…….can’t wait.

So I had a wonderful birthday and I will put this week in the blog file as a truly memorable time and to add this to the rest of the year with Mikes birthday party in May and our family gathering in July here in Brevands,  I can now gather up an armful of happy memories to keep for every.

It is not all over though, we will close this 60 years with a new year party and the chance to be surrounded by lovely people all over again …….