Adventures in France Episode 5

This past week has been a fairly quiet one for us. Being based in one place and experiencing actually living in France as opposed to exploring France is quite different. Our days are very similar to days spent at home in South Africa; the usual routine of cooking , cleaning, washing and ironing having re-established itself very easily in a different location. Our biggest problem, if one can all it that, is the weather which is not nearly as predictable as it is at home, and with a very limited wardrobe, we have to try and keep something in reserve in case the weather changes dramatically as it can, it does and it has! Last week started off cool and rainy but improved as the week went on until we had some really brilliant days. This week started with a bang! Monday was an absolute scorcher with temperatures at least in the high 20’s. From them it has all been downhill and by Sunday evening it was once again cool and drizzly but not really too cold.
On Monday, in the blazing heat, Neels decided that he couldn’t let the grass get any longer so out came the lawn-mower and he started to cut. After a few moments, though, he was back indoors looking for some sort of protection for his head. Yes, it really was that hot! Eventually he settled for a dishcloth with knots tied in two corners and finished the lawn looking for all the world like and Arab.
The increasing warmth of the days has also encouraged the plants in the garden and the poppies are a real sight at the moment – there are hundreds of them! There are also masses of sweet peas of all colours and a lot of really pretty flowers that I don’t know the names of but which make a very spectacular show. We won’t mention the weeds which we dispose of by the barrow load but which always manage to re-appear.
We also improved South African/French relations this week by offering the entire crop of artichokes to our one neighbour whom we had not yet met. We have only ever tasted them once and I seem to remember that at the time I considered them a bit of a waste of tme, but she was simply delighted with the gift and eventually left clutching a large bag to herself as if it was filled with gold. Our French will have to improve quite a bit to maintain regular contact as she appears to have a strong accent and speaks rather fast for our limited vocabularies, but at least we now know each others names and can greet each other in a more friendly fashion.
We also decided to improve our image with the village residents by beautifying our front entrance a little and to this end, planted some petunias in the flower box outside the door. The following day, some members of the commune gathered at the 'municipal store' which is situated across the road from our house, where they hauled out a number of large flower pots and hanging baskets. Someone else arrived with a tralier full of geranium plants and they all spent the afternoon filling the pots and planting out the seedlings, after which the pots were taken to various points along the street and the baskets were hung on existing wrought iron brackets while the window boxes were placed on walls and window ledges. Theye are going to look wonderul in a few weeks time
By Saturday, the weather was becoming grey again, but with quite high clouds so we set off to visit Nicky in the house near Montreal where she was ‘pet-sitting’. We asked ‘Jane’ to take via the ‘shortest route’ which we have come to realize is her version of a straight line between two points and will inevitably lead us through vineyards, farmyards and backyards on some impossible-looking lanes, but they will always be passable and the route is always the prettiest, and the roads, however narrow, are always tarred. Coming home we generally ask her for the ‘fastest route’ and then she sends us via the main roads where one can do more than the 30 kilometres an hour of the narrow lanes.
Then it was Sunday again and we were back to the weather of two weeks ago, cold, grey and drizzly. But that is fine! I am not looking forward to the middle of summer when we have been told that the mercury can rise to 40 degrees!
I know that everyone is always interested in what things cost when we are away, so I had a look at some of our till slips and this is what I found:-

Toothpaste (Colgate) is R20.70
Long-life milk (1 litre) R8.40
Tinned chopped tomates R5.80
Crisps (150 gm) R8.30 Is this not bigger than the SA chip packets?
Shortbread biscuits (400 gm) R5.50
Sugar (1 kg) R7.70
Tomatoes 1 kg R16.00
Sliced ham 6 large slices R16.00 that's pre-packed not fresh sliced

I have used a conversion of ten Rand to the Euro which is not quite right but is close enough.

To keep myself busy when not doing household chores, shopping or socializing, I am busy making a herd of small elephants and a flock of geese which I intend to sell on a stall at a car boot sale in the middle of June. They look very cute standing on the dining room table, so I am hoping they will look as appealing to the prospective buyers out there. The only reason I mention this is that it is the cause of the blog being posted a day late – I was very busy stuffing a goose or two!

Adventures in France Episode 4

The past week has been mostly fine and clear to spectacularly beautiful weather. For the first time since we arrived, we have been able to spend the entire day without jerseys, and now, at the end of the week have even ditched the extra blanket over the duvet on our bed. From time to time we have had sights of the mountains still snow-covered right down to the foothills, but so far the rain has not followed . We have taken advantage of the good weather and have gone on long meandering drives through the countryside. It is quite hilly around here so every now and again we end up on the crest of a ridge with endless views in all directions.
On the first real day of sunshine, we asked our jolly bell-ringer if she had the time to show us inside the church. She quickly fetched the key and let us in. What a surprise! Not dark, dank and stark as so many rural churches are, but instead, lit by two magnificent chandeliers donated by a local chateau-owner before the chateau was demolished, we found the most wonderful and intricate wood carvings done by a member of the parish in 1869. I did not have my camera to hand, as I had not thought it likely to be necessary, but will definitely ask her to open up again for us so that I can take some pictures.
We also managed to make it to Marciac market this week, as the sun was shining. It is a big bustling affair and a great meeting place for people who don’t see each other very often. The coffee shops and cafes were doing a roaring trade, as apart from meeting up for coffee, it was a good place to rest one’s feet. Neels bought himself a cheap pair of jeans, which he tried on in the back of the salesman’s truck, so that he could work in the garden or on the car without fear of getting oil on his good trousers. And he had reason to use them the very next afternoon.
We had noticed some activity across the road from the turn-in to the village when we returned from the market, so had strolled across and found a very expert digger operator busy constructing a driveway into the property and a level place for what we thought was for a house. When he noticed us watching operations, a youngish man who turned out to be the owner came over and greeted us. We got talking and discovered that he was from Marseilles, and was, indeed, preparing to build a house but not on the level bit – that was for offloading building materials – but rather further down the slope, where two semi-ruined walls were all that remained of an original structure. When Neels went to inspect the site the following day after we had returned from an outing, he found everyone standing with their hands in their hair because they were in the midst of pouring foundations and the concrete mixer had died. In a short while, and wearing his special ‘work’ jeans, Neels had the engine going again and then stayed on to help until they had finished for the day, which was at about 8 pm. I must just say here that the foundations were dug in the morning by the digger, and the concrete pouring started in the afternoon. The only ‘labourers’ on the site were the owner, his wife and a rather old man. Luckily the house site was downhill from the mixer so full wheelbarrows went down and empty ones up, but it was a hot day and the work had to be finished in one go. No team of workers standing on the shovels here!
Meanwhile, Goldie had developed a spell of hiccups that was a bit worrying, so some time was spent inspecting her innards. New spark plugs seemed to be indicated so off we went to find the right kind. Unfortunately when we got to the shop, I discovered that I had left the dictionary at home, so we spent a few moments giving the poor salesman a minor heart attack trying to describe a spark plug in the limited words at our disposal. Well………..doesn’t a spark plug cause a sort of fire in the engine?? After a quick peep out of the window to see that our car was not on fire, he went off to fetch a parts catalogue and suddenly we were in business! With the new plugs fitted, Goldie was all smiles again and goes twice as well as before.
Our daily building site inspection showed us that even in this beautiful peaceful countryside, danger lurks. As Neels stepped down off the roadside to the leveled area, I saw a quick movement in the grass and a metre long, thick snake slithered behind his foot and away into the longer grass. We have been assured that the only poisonous snake is a viper which is a skinny little thing, but this looked horrid. We shall have to care if we are walking along the roads with their grassy verges if this warm weather continues.

Adventures in France Episode 3

A rather longer week this time due to being without a computer last weekend, and such a lot to tell about, but I will try to keep it concise.
Saturday, the day we were due to take the laptop to the repair man, turned out to be a simply brilliant day. A good day, in fact for a drive to parts not previously explored, so we asked Jane to take us to Sombrun, near Tarbes, and off we set. The scenery was breath-taking as ever, although one could see that the farmers further south had had even more rain than we had as the fields were water-logged. Passing that way again a few days later, however, it had all drained away so perhaps it was not a disaster for them.
The IT man promised to drop off the PC on Monday as he had work to do somewhere near us, so we reset Jane, drove off and prepared to enjoy the view. On the way, Jane suffered an attack of laryngitis and from then on could only whisper, which I suppose should have warned us that all was not well with our navigation system, but it didn’t, so we were very surprised when we suddenly landed up at Nogaro, where we had been two days before. Not at all where we wanted to be now, and to get home meant back-tracking about 30 kms. What a good thing we didn’t have any dead-lines that day! The trouble is that all the little green hilly lanes look so much alike; the tiniest roads are tarred and if one really isn’t taking much notice of the signboards, it is dreadfully easy to get lost. Once we got home and could read the handbook, we discovered what Jane’s problem was, corrected it and now she is fine again. Thank goodness.
The next day was Barcelona Grand Prix day, which we had thought we would have to miss out on but Nicky had been invited out to lunch, so offered us the use of her flat and TV. Thank you, Nicky it was much appreciated. Although our weather was as grey as usual, we were pleased to notice that Barcelona was sunny and bright as Jenny and Ryan had arrived there the previous day for a short stay before coming on to visit France. That evening, though, we had an ultra-clear view of the Pyrenees which was spectacular but probably bad news as far as local weather was concerned. However we awoke to clear skies and an almost warm breeze the next day, which had us both out of doors in the garden. A wonderful change.
By Tuesday, our life of idleness was beginning to bore me to tears so I decided that it was time to find a wool shop and buy some suitable wool and needles to make some little elephants to sell later in the year. Finding the shop was not a problem – we had walked past it on Saturday afternoon (when it was closed) while exploring the little town of Marciac on the way back from the IT man. Buying wool and needles was going to be more of a challenge. Clutching my dictionary firmly, (thank goodness for Mr Larousse), I marched into the shop confidently. Happily there was no-one else there so I didn’t mind being an idiot quite so much! In my best French I asked the lady behind the counter for knitting needles. “Mais oui” she said “Quelle nombre?” to which I could easily reply “Trois, s’il vous plait”. And right about there my vocabulary ran out! And I still hadn’t got any wool, yarn, whatever. So I looked around and saw what I thought looked like balls of double-knitting and grabbed one. “Non, non” she said, indicating that for size 11 needles I should be using 4-ply. I took the double-knitting back again and said “Mais je prefer…..” and held it up. Then she wanted to know what I was going to do with it. Oh help! I knew it would come to this. My brain scrambled around and I eventually managed to say that I knit small animals. Meanwhile her son-in-law who had been in the back of the shop, had come out to help, and he asked if I meant little jerseys for small animals, like for a hamster perhaps? But I managed to get across that it was the little animals that I knit not clothes for them, so once again Madame the shop keeper took the ball out of my hand and replaced it with another showing me that what I had had was wool and that she was giving me acrylic. Yay!! Now I needed two more balls – one in ‘noir’, “Black” she said, and one in ‘blanc’, which she repeated as “White”. We all congratulated each other on our cleverness and we left on very good terms. I had asked her for stuffing as well, but could only find the word for the sort of stuffing one puts into a chicken, so we had a good laugh, but she didn’t keep it anyway – either sort!
Meanwhile Jenny and Ryan had arrived to stay with Nicky in Aignan, so we arranged to meet up for lunch the following day at a place not far from either of us where they serve a set menu of traditional, local food which is always delicious. Being still on the cool side, we sat indoors which was a first for Neels and I as whenever we have been to this particular restaurant in the past, we have sat out side in the sunlight. I can’t imagine how old the building is, but to get to the first floor, there is a semi-spiral stair with a really spindly little railing, and thousands of feet must have stomped up and down them over the years.
After lunch we drove on to re-visit the little town that I had photographed and then embroidered a while ago. It has grown quite a bit but happily has not become too commercialized and the scene that I photographed is still very recognizable. We decided not to follow Nicky when we left, but to find our own way home, without Jane, a map or anything. Well, the end of the story was that three-quarters of an hour later we were back exactly where we started! So out came Jane and in about ten minutes we were home!
We invited Jenny and Ryan to lunch on Saturday, so that they could see where we live and to have a chance to chat to them and then afterwards we took them to a delightful village called Plaisance, not far away. It is a little different because it has not one, but two, town squares which have the main road running along one side and the other three sides have buildings which jut out over the wide pavement, the upper floors being supported on columns. The columns are joined by big arches so the whole effect is a bit like an abbey cloister.
When we arrived there we found a ‘féte’ in progress. The first square was completely taken up with various stalls of second-hand goods – a car boot sale with a vengeance. The second square was mostly stalls to do with eco-living – solar panels, house insulation, eco-friendly methods of building etc, which Neels and Ryan found quite interesting. Jenny and I had wandered off to a large hall where there was a handcraft exhibition. Each stall-holder was busy performing whatever craft they were displaying for sale, so a basket weaver was making weird and wonderful baskets; a leather-worker was making handbags, purses, belts and shoes; a lady was hand-embroidering large single initials onto pieces of muslin about the size of a small hanky (the finished piece was edged with fine buttonhole stitch and then framed); there was a wood-turner; a couple of jewellery makers and also a few artists. One couple appeared to be English speaking so we spoke to them and discovered that they had been in the area for six years, but had recently had a trip to South Africa, and about three weeks ago had spent some time on Grotto Beach in Hermanus. What an amazingly small world we live in!
When we came out of the craft display, the sun had obligingly come out in force, although the wind was still chilly, so we wandered around the car boot sale, amazed at what people will try to sell to other people, and then found a dark blue Melamine tray which was just what we needed for the house. I had considered negotiating with the stall holder but she gave me a look that said she was not negotiable, so we paid the asking price which was really, low enough.
On the way home we chatted about what we had seen and all agreed that the standard of workmanship in the craft section had been extremely high for such a relatively small rural town.
The pictures that I have included this week are of our car, 'Goldie' the Golden Oldie and of the little Roman soldiers who hold back the shutters on the house windows.

Adventures in France Episode 2

An early blog this week because my computer is off to the local IT man tomorrow to see if he can get it to show DVD's and I won't get it back until Monday. This house doesn't have any TV, but various people have said they will lend us DVD's which would be a good substitute when we are tired of reading.

The week started off in stark contrast to the week we arrived - it was freezing. Happily, the owners of the house told us to go ahead and light a fire in the big stove thingy in the lounge, and what a difference that made.

We are more settled in too. We went to Eauze to do a big shop and came back with lots of lovely goodies to eat. Now, I think we will be able to have more balanced meals instead of the rather scrappy affairs Neels has had to put up with up to now.

The cold weather and freezing rain persisited right through until Thursday which meant that we couldn't go to the weekly market at Marciac on Wednesday as planned, so we invited Nicky for lunch and we all sat in front of a roaring fire and chatted, and even fitted in a game of Scrabble in the afternoon.

By Thursday Neels and I were beginning to suffer from cabin fever, so when it showed signs of clearing slightly we decided to first go for a walk which was not a good idea as it was still bitterly cold outside. Then we caught sight of our one neighbour trotting off down the road. We had been told that she rings the church bells every day at noon, so we ran after her and introduced ourselves. We walked with her to the church where she bing-bonged away merrily for a while then gave three tugs with the right hand, three with the left then another three with each hand again for twelve o'clock and then lots more bing-bongs. She invited us for aperitif which we accepted, and she led the way into the kitchen of her house where a fire was smouldering in an enormous fireplace. What a character she is! Although we could barely understand each other we all chattered away for about half an hour, and from the bits that we could understand we discovered that she is 88 years old; has lived in the same house almost forever; has two sons living in the vicinity; lived through the war which was terrible and is not in favour of cold weather in May! She demonstrated to us how she sits on an upright chair with her feet in the fireplace to eat her meals, and then sits astride it to warm her back and to watch TV! She also promised to tell the bakery lady who whizzes through the village each day, that we would also like to get bread from her. We parted as good friends.

In the afternoon, with the weather still looking fairly good we drove to Nogaro about 25 kms away to finally get a SIM card for my phone. When we got there we discovered that the shop only opened at 3 pm, but quite conveniently, we had parked right outside a bakery which had a very obvious board outside stating that parking was for customers only. So we just had to go in and buy a couple of delicious vailla custard slices which we sat in the car and ate. After a few minutes the bakery lady came out and asked if we were going to be staying long, becasue there was long-stay parking behind the church across the road. feeling a bit embarrassed we told her that we were waiting for the Orange (cell phone service provider) shop to open but would move at once. then she was embarrassed and said that it was perfectly allright to park there as long as we didn't stay for longer than an hour - it was really nothing to do with the board uotside her shop! She didn't want us to get a parking fine.

In the end we did stay a bit longer than we intended because buying a SIM card is such a mission. I had to give my date of birth, for goodness sake! Then when we had the card and it was in the phone and I had a number, we had to go across the road to the 'tabac' to buy some time to put in the phone, and then go back to the first shop for someone to help us key in the voucher number. What a performance!.

On the way home we were thrilled to see a deer cross the road ahead of us not far from this village. It's nice to know they are still in the woods around here, although when I mentioned it to Nicky she said warningly 'Remember, there are always two'. I believe there have been some nasty accidents with people hitting or nearly hitting them. Still, we enjoyed seeing it.

On Friday morning we awoke to brilliant sunshine and a clear sky. A good day for photographs, so we dashed outside and started snapping everything, in case the sun disappeared again. So now you can at long last see what the house looks like that we are staying in, and how it is situated in the village. In the picture of Neels and the house, that is all one house although it looks like two.

Adventures in France Episode 1

The day we arrived was simply stunning! Warm without being hot, still and very clear. Being the beginning of Spring means that all the wild flowers are out and we were dazzled by the array of colours. There are a lot more blue wild flowers here than we have at home, which is interesting, and then of course there are masses of red poppies, yellow daisies and all sorts of white flowers. To top it all off, when we arrived at the house we could hear a cuckoo calling in the woods below the house, sounding like a Swiss clock endlessly chiming.

The view from our bedroom is wonderful and looks more or less south to the Pyrenees, which we caught a glimpse of yesterday. Apparently, one doesn't really want to be able to see them as that usually indicates rain in the near future.

Having had a 5 am start on Monday and practically no sleep that night, we were fairly bushed when we arrived. so it was a really early night for us (8pm) and a straight 10 ours sleep before we were properly compus mentis again. Yesterday was spent sorting out our vehicle which is too cute for words. It is, I think, probably called gold, but is closer to 'dirty nappy' colour; two door; and with a couple of dings here and there which makes us feel very at home as it appears to be a requirement in this part of the world! But we are now all legal and insured and can drive around quite safely - or as safely as we can with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car! Neels really has to keep his wits about him.

Nicky didn't really give us much time to get over the effects of the long flight, and we were exhausted again last night, but it was probably better to get all those arrangements done at once and Thursday was a day at home for us. We went to examine the veggie garden and found a superb crop of blackjacks, which Neels started attacking with vigour and found that the ground is like concrete. In amongst them though, we found some little red potatoes; some broad beans, onions and some very strangely shaped carrots, so we had food for that night. Yay!!

On Friday, Nicky phoned to tell us that a friend of hers had offered us a microwave, and that she would be bringing it over later that afternoon. This was wonderful news as I have got so used to living with one that I can’t imagine life without it. To celebrate the event, I decided to bake some biscuits!! I thought would make some custard powder biscuits which are so easy and my favourites, but soon discovered that there was no custard powder in the house. (I wonder if the French even know about custard powder – they probably only make it the proper way with eggs etc) Never mind, I thought, there is Maizena, so I will make melting moments instead. No butter, but we had margarine and no baking powder so I left it out. Flour and icing sugar I found in the pantry. The mixture wasn’t quite as I expected it to be and certainly didn’t resemble the usual dough, so I put blobs of it on to what I hoped was a baking sheet. Then into the oven on 190 degrees. Ha ha! Ten minutes later they were still the same colour and getting sort of dry on the top, so we turned the oven to the next setting, which is supposed to be 220 degrees, and baked them for another 10 minutes. This time they came beautifully golden. Hoping they would be edible, I stuck the little biscuits together with a bit if butter icing and arranged them on a pretty plate. When our guest arrived, the success of the venture was obvious as she quickly disposed of at least three cookies and licked the crumbs off the plate!! I don’t think I could make them again, if I tried, as there are few measuring spoons or cups, the oven settings are diabolical and I can’t quite make out why they came out well. Just a lucky chance.

Later that night, at 8.30 in fact, we received a phone call from a gentleman from the motor registration department to tell us that we had omitted a document in the bundle of papers that we had sent off to his office on Thursday. We were amazed! Firstly that the letter had already reached its destination; secondly that it was already being attended to; then thirdly that he was still at work at 8.30 at night.

On Saturday we awoke to the sound of rain gurgling in the gutters and down-pipes, grey skies and a decided nip in the air. The forecast ‘weather’ had arrived. Good for the farmers; bad for the visitors. It was also a Public Holiday, for which the whole country closed down, so there was little point in going anywhere except over to Nicky to print out the form which we needed (from the Internet) and get her help in completing it in readiness for faxing it off on Monday morning. How we would have coped without Nicky’s help, I just don’t know. She has been a real star.

Today, Sunday, brought a new confrontation. This time with the washing machine. Once again, if one just knew what all the little symbols stood for, it would be really simple to operate – as the home-owners said it is – but without no manuals, we are doing everything by guesswork which is always the longest way to solve any problems. It doesn’t really matter as it is again grey and drizzly, and not a good drying day for laundry, so it can take as long as it likes – this time!.

We haven’t yet met any of our neighbours. In fact we have hardly seen anyone since we arrived. It is almost like living in a ghost town. But once this holiday weekend is over we intend to march over to the two houses we know are occupied and introduce ourselves. In our very best French!