France 2013 Chapter 6

Well, I just don’t know what season this is supposed to be! Monday was a pretty good day although hardly warm. Tuesday was grey but not quite raining. Wednesday was simply beautiful with clear sunny skies. Thursday poured with rain all day. Friday started off well but soon deteriorated and  a strong wind came up. Saturday rained most of the day after raining all night, and once again a strong wind came up in the afternoon, and then today, Sunday started off really miserably; cleared a little round about lunchtime and got progressively better from there on. It has rained so much that I am sure the house is floating! Certainly, when we walk anywhere in the garden, it feels as if we are walking on a soggy sponge. We feel really cheated! Spring last year was truly stunning and we spent a lot of time driving around enjoying the flowers and the new green growth on the trees. In fact,the only thing that tells me that we actually are moving into Spring is that the sun now sets at about eight o’clock instead of six thirty as it did when we arrived.

As a result of the grey days, we have not been out and about as we had hoped, but did go to Auch on Tuesday to collect our new resident’s permits and are now legal again for another year. And then on Thursday we took Pieter to the airport in Toulouse to catch his flight to South Africa where he will be for the next couple of weeks. On the way home, we stopped off in Auch again to visit a shop we had heard about but never visited. It is a sportswear outlet known as Decathlon, which I believe has branches elsewhere too, but this is an exceptionally large store. I suppose one could refer to it as a warehouse with aisles in it similar to a supermarket.  Each aisle is devoted to the equipment needed for a specific sport. Cyclists, for example, can buy all the clothing needed – shoes, socks, shorts, shirts and crash helmets – for the weekend outing, as well as the special light-weight gear preferred by the professionals. And the bicycles! Everything from kiddies models with training wheels to the top ultra-light racers. And that is only one sport that they feature. As we wandered the aisles, we discovered that there was equipment for all the racquet sports; skating of various types –ice, roller and board, with all the associated protective gear; hunting, fishing and hiking; not to mention mountaineering and rock-climbing. And what about ball sports – football and rugby? Yes, them too. I really didn’t know that so many different types of shoes were available just for sport! What an eye-opener.

Since then though, we have hardly moved out of the house except to go shopping for groceries. The French don’t enjoy a long weekend over Easter as we do, but judging by the number of chocolate eggs and bunnies arranged in the supermarkets, they certainly enjoy lots of sweet stuff at this time. An interesting tradition is that all the church bells are silenced from Thursday evening before Easter to Easter Sunday morning. The children are told that all the bells have gone to Rome to fetch Easter eggs, and are sent outside just before the bells ring on Sunday to see if they can see the bells flying back from Rome. While they are outside, the adults hide chocolate eggs for them which the children then hunt for once the bells ring out again. Rather a fun idea, I think.

Another result of the grey days, and us not having been anywhere of note, is that I have only one photograph to share with you this week. In a rare moment of sunshine I saw this remarkable little flower and had to snap it. It is a tiny plant, standing less than ten centimeters high, with the most amazingly blue flowers. Quite lovely.

We can only hope for better weather next week.

France 2013 Chapter 5

 

Something that I forgot to mention last week with reference to the snow, was that in spite of the trees being completely covered in the stuff, when it melted, the blossom was still there and totally unaffected. And when the snow began to melt, which happened the day after the fall, it didn’t drip down slowly and make a slushy mess but rather, fell off the trees in great lumps making an audible thump as it hit the ground and then just disappeared! By mid-afternoon the day after the snowfall, there was barely a sign of it ever having happened. A mildly surreal experience, to say the least.

On Monday of this week we awoke to rain drumming on the roof. Not a great incentive to get out of a cosy bed! And it didn’t stop all day. It just rained and rained and then rained and rained some more. Nice for the farmers, I suppose. By Tuesday it had cleared a bit and work re-started on the Land Rover, which by now was in the final stages of reconstruction. It was an on and off procedure as the rain was not completely finished with us yet, but came in sudden showers which stopped as quickly as they started. Wednesday was more of the same, so with the Land Rover about as far as it can go, a decision was made to use Thursday to do a bit of necessary maintenance on our little Goldie. I think the fact that the available assistant labour was of a better quality than usual may have influenced the decision. As it turned out, it was a beautiful day but the work had to be done. In the afternoon we went for a short drive around and on the way back we took a road which I was sure had had some ancient Roman tiled floors that were being excavated at the side of the route. It was a lovely scenic drive, but I was annoyed and a bit disappointed that we didn’t see the Roman tiles again. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned them because Pieter is now all fired up with enthusiasm to find them and we have covered a fair amount of countryside looking for them. Without any luck, I may say.

It hasn’t only been a week of working on cars though and we have managed to find time to eat out a couple of times in between whiles. In fact we had just returned from a very lengthy lunch today when the skies darkened, there were a few grumbles of thunder and it suddenly started to hail! We really have been treated to every type of weather this week! We have had rain, and plenty of it; stormy,  gusty, howling wind; beautiful sunshine with clear skies; and now hail in great abundance. It will be interesting to see what else is in store for next week.

Oh yes. I almost forgot. Pieter has the most interesting pair of shoes of which I just had to include a picture.

 

France 2013 Chapter 4

 

 

If last week was somewhat dull, we certainly got a wake-up call this week. On Monday we looked at the garden and suddenly realised that a lot of trees had come into blossom, the daffodils in the bed in the front garden were standing up proudly and there were white daisies popping through the grass all over the place. As I thought the day would stay clear, which it didn’t, I had delayed taking any pictures of the lovely sunny day and the pretty blossoms, so had to wait until Tuesday, when the sun once again obliged. It all looked very beautiful and definitely Spring-like. What a shock then, to wake up on Wednesday to a completely white and silent world! I ran from window to window taking dozens of photographs before diving back into bed. (Pieter finally woke at ten o’clock complaining that someone had covered the skylight in his room with cotton-wool which made it dark). By now the Land Rover was mobile again so we piled into it and turned the heater up to ‘Very Hot’ and went for a drive through the snowy countryside. I’m sure that the locals who have seen all this a hundred times find snow a nuisance, and a mess when it starts to melt, but for us it was a beautiful novelty. It wasn’t a heavy fall, not more than about ten centimetres, but it was enough to completely change our surroundings. And so quiet!

There was no work done on the Landy that day and we spent it lazing around and playing Scrabble. That’s my kind of day! Next day though, it was back to work and bits and pieces were taken off or out of the car and brought indoors to be worked on. We are still waiting for the last two deliveries of parts but to date, this is what has been achieved – without the benefit of a workshop or even a shelter, and with very few special tools.

Checker plate applied to bonnet, mud guards and various other areas of the exterior.

Mud flaps fitted

Side steps fitted

Window mechanism converted to electric operation

Central locking system installed

Radio and navigation system installed

Stereo loudspeakers fitted

Reversing camera installed

Front seats disassembled, restored and reassembled

In all, a magnificent job and I have to admit that I am really proud of my men.

All we needed now was somewhere to go, so we initially thought of a day trip down to the Pyrenees. Before leaving I decided to check on the weather conditions there – a good idea which made us change our plans. The maximum expected temperature for the day was  -3 ° with a wind chill factor of -14°! Not at all the sort of weather for sight-seeing, so instead we made a huge circular drive in a more northerly direction which was better but still a rather grey day. Sadly the sunny Spring conditions of earlier in the week had given way to a cloudy overcast and the forecast says that we should expect the same all week.

At this rate my embroidery should grow by leaps and bounds!

 

France 2013 Chapter 3

 

Not a terribly exciting week for anyone outside the  Ferreira household, but a fairly productive one for the ones in the French household. For the men in my world it was a week of tearing a car to bits and putting it back together again without having any pieces left over. In fact there were quite a few pieces left over as old parts were replaced with new; manually operated windows were converted to electric; a central locking system was installed and a very hi-tec radio cum navigation system was slotted into a space in the dashboard. At one stage I poked my head into the front of the car to see what was going on and had only one word for what I saw – Aaargh!! Had that been my car in the local garage for repairs, I think I would just fainted on the spot, but the men were not a bit fazed. The two of them sat side by side in the front seats muttering things like ‘ Blue goes to blue, Brown goes to black, yellow and green goes to green’ as they matched up a hundred different wires. As the days passed, more and more things were installed or attached and the pile of empty cartons for recycling grew larger and larger. Finally the day came when the dashboard had to be refitted and the new maze of wires had to be squeezed in behind, which took a few tries, but in the end, it all went in and the testing could start. I can’t honestly say there was great jubilation, but there was definitely an air of quiet pride about both of the mechanics as, one by one, all the new systems worked. There were a couple of minor glitches like, perhaps, when the ignition was switched on and the hooter blew or when the central locking wouldn’t unlock again but these were very small problems and were quickly sorted.

Meanwhile I sat at the study window looking out at all this activity, rather like the Lady of Shalott or some other mediaeval lady, doing my embroidery. When the chilly wind was blowing, it was very pleasant sitting in the sun and sewing, but on the warmer days I could open the windows wide and chat to the workmen outside. The end result was that I have now completed two of the four stitch charts which make up the complete cross-stitch picture. At this rate, I might even finish the whole thing before the end of the holiday…… but I hope not.

Driving back home again this afternoon after an extremely leisurely lunch, we had a wonderfully clear view of the Pyrenees in their blanket of snow. This makes for good sight-seeing but according to local legend, if one can see the mountains, then it is going to rain within the next four days. We actually saw the mountains on Thursday and it poured with rain that night so perhaps there is some truth in the story. We still have to test it again!

France 2013 Chapter 2

 

Week two and a week of events and surprises – some pleasant, some unexpected but all of them interesting. The first surprise was waking up on Monday to a white world and the air filled with slowly drifting snow-flakes. It was beautiful but obviously, freezing and I darted around the house taking photographs from inside the closed windows. It continued to snow for most of the day but drizzled a bit in between, so the snow never got more than about three centimetres thick. Certainly not enough to build a snowman so we didn’t even try going outdoors. We did get post, however, and it turned out to be the documents we had been waiting for from the UK, that were necessary for our permit renewal.

By the following morning practically all of the snow had melted and, as we now had everything necessary, we drove off towards Auch under a brilliantly sunny sky. The snowy conditions were not really past though, and the closer  we got to Auch, the thicker the snow was lying on the sides of the road. However the sunny sky persisted so we carried on, with the car’s heater giving out a warm blast of air. The office we were aiming for is located next to the magnificent sixteenth century cathedral, and there is a handy parking area on the other side of the building, which we have always used in the past. To our surprise we found half of the parking unusable and barricaded off to allow workmen to prune the trees in the area, so had no option but to return to the maze of one-way, narrow streets that the old part of the city consists of. The cathedral sits on the top of a small hill, as so many of these old churches do, and we found ourselves getting further and further down the hill until, right at the bottom and next to the river that runs through the city we found a place to stop. Quite coincidentally it was right across from an enormous staircase which is known as the Escalier Monumentale, which leads back up to the cathedral. Excellent! But most of you know that I ‘don’t do stairs’ and 220 steps later I was beginning to remember why. It was also absolutely freezing and our breath was coming in little puffs of white cloud as we struggled up. Once at the top though the rest was plain sailing and we were in and out of the office in a matter of minutes with our temporary permits in hand and a promise of a  phone call when the new ones are ready. The fact that the calves of my legs were agonisingly stiff for the next four days we will just try to forget about!

The following day, we decided that as we had been coming to this little village for the past three years, it was probably time to introduce ourselves to the Mayor’s Secretary. These ladies are essential to village life and pretty much run everything that happens. In the smaller villages like Espas and Peyrusse Vieille, the Secretary usually only works two half days a week, but works in several other villages too, so they really do know everything that goes on in the area. The day that we went to meet ‘our’ Secretary, the Mayor happened to be in the office too so now we have met the entire gang.

Almost every day since we arrived, strange parcels had been arriving all addressed to Pieter and on Thursday, the man himself arrived, in the Land Rover he had bought in Spain. Not a new vehicle, but a very basic model with none of the accessories that his South African one has. That was all to be changed though, and starting on Friday, all sorts of bits and pieces appeared out of the many parcels and began to be attached. It was sometimes a difficult task as special tools were often required and of course, we didn’t have them. But as they say, ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan and at one stage we had the whole bonnet of the vehicle lying on the floor of the lounge keeping warm in front of the fire so that the glue attaching the checker plate could ‘cure’. To help things along a bit, we had filled all the available saucepans with water and they were positioned at intervals around the bonnet. As if that wasn’t strange enough, the two men of the house had bought themselves white paper paint-suits to wear instead of overalls and they looked for all the world like two technicians out of an American Crime TV series.

The weather has improved enormously and today was even warm enough to have windows wide open and to leave off one layer of clothing. The forecast indicates that it should stay like this until at least Wednesday of the coming week, so hopefully by then all the car renovations will be finished. By then too, we will have learned a few new words in French. Our neighbour across the road is a fairly handy fellow so we have been able to borrow things like a hack-saw and a few other tools from him, but we have had first to learn the names in French! Ah well…………it’s all part of the learning process and the adventure.