Our place in France Chapter 65

I had thought that last week was pretty hot, but this week was even hotter although I haven’t been able to fine a superlative for ‘sweltering’. Believe me, if there is one, it describes the beginning of this week. It hasn’t really rained for quite a while now and we were starting feel distinctly droopy – a bit like our plants before they get watered! Courtney went off by train to visit her friend, on Wednesday and as we drove into town the thermometer stood at 40 degrees. To make matters worse, it is a steamy, muggy sort of heat which just drains all ones energy. Thursday was the same again and the two of us sat in the lounge with a fan blowing on us and watched movies all day. Just like a couple of lumps of mashed potato! Neither of us had slept very well the previous few nights so we were delighted when it cooled off a bit and a few drops of rain fell. Since then it has stayed cooler, thank goodness.

So you shouldn’t be too surprised to see a very short chapter this week. We have hardly moved away from the house so there are few pictures to show you – just a couple of close-ups of the geraniums of which we are very proud. They are such forgiving plants and appear to be able to survive rather extreme temperatures, apart from making the house look really attractive.

We have taken to buying seed balls for the birds and get much entertainment watching them bicker over whose turn it is. The pigeons are very envious and stand on the verandah rail watching carefully but all too aware that they have no chance of reaching the ball. It hangs on the end of a piece of stiff wire and although the small birds can manage to walk along the wire quite easily, I think the pigeons realise that their claws are far too big and that even closed up tight, they will just end up upside  down on the wire which would be far too undignified.

The French can be amusing at times. They seldom comment on how hot it is; they say instead, ‘It is a little warm’ or ‘It is not cool today’. Masters of understatement.  They also say that an item is ‘less dear’ when they mean ‘cheap’. No wonder we have trouble understanding sometimes. A person doesn’t faint, they ‘fall among the apples’; a pothole is a ‘chickens nest’ and when it rains a lot, it doesn’t rain cats and dogs but it rains ropes. I’m not sure where the cats and dogs came from originally, but I really can see it raining ropes. The trick is, of course, to remember these phrases when speaking to people, and be able to drop them into the conversation. We haven’t quite reached that stage yet.

Our place in France Chapter 64

Another week. Another blog, and what a hot week this has been. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday all registered temperatures of over 30 degrees with a slight lessening to 28 degrees on Saturday. Phew! Too hot for me. However there were things to be done so we just had to try to ignore the weather and get on with it. On Wednesday I chickened out as we only had to fetch Courtney from school. She has now finished for the (school) year and has improved her French sufficiently well to be promoted to the next year. Well done, my girl!

On Thursday we HAD to go shopping for groceries as we were expecting guests for the weekend and needed some fresh supplies. Actually it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be as the supermarket was blissfully cool inside. After lunch, Courtney took advantage of the neighbours kind offer of the use of their pool and came back looking all refreshed, then put up the sun umbrella, laid out her towel and a pillow and settled in for an afternoon of tanning and reading. Summer has definitely arrived!

We had been putting off doing some serious cleaning for quite a while, but with visitors expected who had not seen the house before, we didn’t really want to show it off under a layer of dust so all three of us got stuck in and swept, vacuumed, wiped and polished until the house was sparkling again and we were totally pooped! Courtney was a star and managed to keep going much longer than Neels or I did, but she has got youth on her side!

Our guests duly arrived as planned having had a fearsome battle with the GPS built in to their hire car and lacking any sort of map. Eventually they stopped at a suitable place and bought themselves a map after which things became a little less chaotic in the car. Our visitors are an Australian cousin (?) we have not seen for about eight years or more and her new husband whom we have never met before. We quickly decided that this is not the ideal house for him as he is six foot three and we have a lot of exposed beams at about six foot two! Mind you, he doesn’t seem to be too concerned about it and says that he is slowly getting used to low beams in France. No doubt, one whack at a time!

The Sunday morning market in Villeneuve was a good reason to drag everyone out of bed at a reasonable time and was it busy?!! There was good turnout of stalls and Cousin Carla was persuaded to buy some strawberries, raspberries and cherries all wonderfully fresh, sweet and juicy.

Our veggie patch is coming on with the sweetcorn now about a metre high and the tomatoes are looking good with four little fruits so far. Our fig tree has recovered from being badly burnt by frost in the cold weather and has small fruits on it for the second time. I am not going to escape the jam-making at the end of the year this time. I had better start collecting some bottles, I think.

Our place in France Chapter 63

During this week we received horrific news of the terrible storm in the Western Cape, closely followed by the even worse news of the fires in Knysna. We had seen warnings on the news of the approaching storm and even phoned the family to find out if reports that the schools would be closed were true. It was true, and with good reason as the winds ripped through Cape Town and surroundings at speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour, accompanied by torrential rain. Many people had roofs torn off and trees were blown over but luckily our family suffered only minor damage. The huge awning over the deck on one side of the house was split down the middle but may be able to be repaired. On the other side of the house, the two car car-port which has a corrugated iron roof was lifted right off its supports and came crashing down again, landing fortunately on the wall of the next door property, and not on the cars, but with some puffing and panting and a fair amount of muscle, it was lifted back up and replaced on its poles. Andre then made sure it would not happen again by bolting it in place.

Almost simultaneously we heard the first reports of the fires in Knysna – our old home town. As the day went on, the reports continued to flow in – by phone and on the internet. And as they came, they got more and more horrifying. Whole suburbs were being consumed by the vicious flames, fanned by gale force winds. We still know a lot of people who live there and were desperate to find out if any of them had suffered damage. Needless to say, some had. I think the worst story we heard was of an eighty-something year old couple who had lost everything. How on earth does one start again at that age! My heart really goes out to people like that. Our whole day was spent checking the internet every half hour or so for updates, hoping to hear that it had started raining, but no such luck. The storm that had ravaged Cape Town had blown out to sea and taken the rain with it. Water supplies were getting scarce in Knysna and residents were being asked to use as little water as possible. A difficult ask when your house is in danger of being burnt down. In the end some 10,000 people were evacuated to different locations in the town which were deemed safe. Even the lagoon was not  a safe place to be as the howling wind was whipping up enormous waves and a boat that was ferrying people from the Western Head apparently broke in two while trying to get across the wild water. For those who were there it must have been a terrifying ordeal, while those who had relations and friends there were suffering too as all communications were lost. This is a disaster of the greatest magnitude.

Meanwhile, back in France, summer is upon us and the temperature today is 32 degrees with a promise of 33 by Wednesday. The house, which was so very cold in Winter, is now beautifully cool and we have had the shutters closed all day to keep out the heat. It seems to work rather well. Once things cool off a bit tonight, we will open everything again and let the cool in in preparation for tomorrow. The weather forecasters have already told us that this will be a torrid summer and I am not looking forward to it one little bit.

I do so wish you could all hear the bird that has been singing outside our window for most of the afternoon. It sounds just like a canary, with chirps and whistles and trills, but I can’t see it and have no idea what it is I just know it is lovely to listen to.

Some more good news is that the lilies that were given to us last year and were planted last July, have at last flowered and what a show they have made. We planted them at the bottom of the front steps at the edge of the road against the grey stone wall and they really look very good. We may not be gardeners yet, but we are getting there. Our veggie garden is also coming on well, as is the rockery. I will send some pictures once the rockery plants are bigger than the rocks and can be seen!

Our place in France Chapter 62

For quite some time now we have been trying to put up polystyrene insulation on the ceiling of the cave. As it is the same area as the lower floor of the house, there is rather a lot of ceiling to cover and we are not the best DIY’ers. Also, in mitigation, we have had numerous guests, as I have already told you, and I have been unable to help. So the work has proceeded slowly with one or two guests, and Courtney, being roped in to help put up another sheet. This Wednesday though, with only ourselves in the house and no need to remake beds for anyone soon and with the Madame feeling strong enough to do some stretching and holding, we thought it a good opportunity to get on with the job. In the end we made very good progress and put up three whole sheets. To all the experienced DIY’ers, you can just stop your sneering right now! Let me explain why. First of all the walls of the cave are raw stone so they do not have flat surfaces to deal with; the ceiling area has beams which support the floorboards above and it is on to these that the insulation has to be screwed; allowance has to be made for anything that projects below that level, like light fittings etc, and the ceiling is normal height above the floor. Take that all into consideration.

The insulation sheets that we are using are not heavy but are just over two metres long and sixty centimetres wide. They are quite floppy and need to be handled by two people or they will crack and break off. Now picture this….. we haven’t any trestles so to cut the lengths they are balanced on the rounded top of a three-step kitchen step-ladder and a  v-shaped towel rail which folds flat if you close the ‘V’. I stretch across the board and clutch it to me to try and stop it shifting while Neels saws the necessary piece off. It rocks back and forth and I also have to keep an eye on that towel rail to stop in folding up underneath the board. We are now a bit smarter about the next step, which is to cut out the required notches for protruding bits and pieces, and it was soon done.

Getting it fixed to the ceiling beams is the hardest part. Neels stands on the little ladder and grabs one end while I support the other end with a rubber-bristled broom. The stuff has a mind of its own and twists and turns as if it wants to escape, while the broom slips from side to side, with me pretty much at full stretch. The boards are a tongue-and-grooved type, so once we have them up in the air we then have to slide the tongue into the grove of the previous one, a process which is quite delicate as a misstep could result in the tongue breaking off. All the while this wretched slippery piece of board keeps trying to do just the opposite of what we want.

Add to all of this the fact that the cave is in use and has a lot of stored cartons, among other things, in it, as well as the washing machine, also that part of it has been partitioned off to create Neels’ workshop. All obstacles to getting the job done quickly and smoothly. But fear not………it will be done!! There are about two long sheets still to go and then six shorter pieces.

Earlier in the week Andre left, on a rather convoluted route to Amsterdam where he was to continue his business trip. We took him down to Toulouse on a grey and miserable day and were alarmed to notice the electronic overhead notice boards on the motorway announcing a ‘Traffic alert – storms’. Really? How bad could they be? It was drizzling a bit when we got to the airport and we had to use umbrellas to get to the terminal building, but nothing serious. About an hour later, when we left, the rain had stopped  so we heaved a sigh of relief and thought we had missed the worst. Not so! About ten kilometres from Toulouse we ran into the first storm. The traffic was heavy, the road busy but the rain was literally like someone emptying a bucket over us. You couldn’t see a thing! Luckily the French motorist is fairly well schooled and everyone immediately slowed down and put their hazard lights on, but it was still pretty scary. It only lasted for a few minutes but it was really frightening. And then we hit the next storm! This time we realised that it was relatively unlikely that some crazy driver would try to come roaring past at top speed and managed to cope with the pelting rain, which again only lasted for a couple of minutes. The heavy black cloud continued to follow us for quite a way but luckily we had no more rain until Saturday when we had a violent thunderstorm with enormous raindrops that sounded like hailstones on the windows. Fortunately, that too passed over fairly soon and we were able to go and do some shopping in the relative dry.

On Sunday we were disturbed around mid-morning with the sound of revving engines, an unusual sound in our quiet little village. On investigating we found a number of vintage motor-cycles parked in the square and still more arriving. They were on their way to a display of vintage machines in Villefranche  in the afternoon and apparently there would be upwards of forty in the complete display. The youngest machine was about 5 years old and the oldest was one hundred and five years old. The riders were all very proud of their trusty steeds and were willing to show them off to anyone who was interested.

In the afternoon we drove into Villeneuve to see what was going on at the Giant Antique fair and Car Boot Sale. It was certainly giant and stretched almost right around the town. I bought a DVD of the French version of Brother Bear, hoping it has English subtitles or even English as an option. Cheating, I know, but I was prepared to risk a Euro on it. Neels bought a set of masonry drills that look completely unused, for 2 Euros and Courtney treated herself to some Candy Floss, known here as Father’s Beard, also for 2 Euros. Talk about the last of the big spenders!