EVERY STORY MATTERS

Last week was a big week.  Nick had a big birthday.

Nick was born on 11 November and as a child his birthdays were dominated by the fact that it was Remembrance Day.  His dad was a vicar so Nick spent his early birthdays in church and parades at war memorials.  This was the 1950's and world war two was still very fresh in people's minds.  

My dad's birthday was on 10th November and after my mum died the family made sure he had a special day, especially the big ones; seventy five, eighty and ninety.  Inevitably, with it being the day before Nick's birthday there were often joint birthday teas.  Although Nick and I always celebrated his birthday separately there was still the sense of it being secondary to something else. 

So, with it being Nick's Big Birthday we made a big job of it, lasting several days, before and after.  There were lunches out with friends, a special lunch with just the two of us the day before and an apéros party on the day itself.  A whole bunch of friends came round.  There was a birthday cake, presents, cards, music, the joyful murmur of friends in conversation, the tinkling of glasses and a big smile on his face all day.  Everyone had a lovely time, especially Nick.  

It was a beautiful day for Nick's birthday.  We were busy, cooking, tidying the garden, rearranging furniture, all so much easier when the sun shines to lift your spirits.  The next day it was back to normal, grey skies and rain, but the birthday continued for one more day as we took a break from the washing up and went out for a burger at lunchtime.  We barely noticed that it was pouring with rain outside!

Of course, it’s been a big week for other reasons and as most of the people we know reflect on the outcome and what the future might hold, we stare in horror at the news and hunker down.  We steel ourselves for the forthcoming winter and for the fallout from the election of a man whose morals make him patently unfit to hold such power. 

A few days later my sister in law sent me a link for this.  For people in the UK it’s a chance to have your say about how the pandemic affected you, your friends and family.  I contributed my thoughts and  mostly I wrote about how badly it affected my dad and how the agencies that should have been there to care for him and give us support let us all down.  Not only because of Covid but also because after fourteen years of austerity and bad government the system was geared to fail old people in our country.  The pandemic brought out the worst in services that were already at breaking point.

If you would like to contribute your story to the Covid Enquiry click here.

It’s definitely almost winter here now.  It was only 1°C as we drove home from an evening with friends at the end of Nick's Big Birthday Week and it’s only four weeks until we go home to the UK for Christmas.  How time flies!

I'm pleased to report that an improvement in the weather means that the farmers have been able to get on with their work, most of the dead sunflowers around us have been ploughed in and the fields have been sown with a fresh crop of....who knows, we will have to wait and see!

RANDOM PICTURES.

A friend asked if we had ever seen Tia Maria or other coffee liqueurs in France.  She is on holiday and wanted to make a coffee flavoured tiramisu.

I wasn't sure so we looked and yes you can.  We might try this one ourselves, it looks like a sensible price.

We found out only recently that since March this year motorcycles have to have the French equivalent of an MOT test by early August.  It's called a CT test and previously motorcycles in France were exempt from needing one.  Goodness only knows how this morsel of information had passed us by until now and we only have a few weeks to get it done!  

There's allus summat, as my mother used to say!

 

We have been debating whether or not to keep the Harleys as we don't ride them very often any more and it costs a small fortune to keep them insured.  The weather this year has not been great for motorcycling and when it was we always had other things we had to do or visitors.  

This has rather focussed our minds on the issue.  In order to sell them or ride them they will need a CT and we need to get on with it sharpish!  The person who has done work on them for us before moved premises a while ago and we took a photo of the note on the door for in case we needed him again.  We need him now but couldn't remember when we took the photo and therefore where to look for it.  We have thousands of photos on our phones.

I decided to do a search and tried various things.  Only when I put "handwriting" into the search bar did his note turn up.  Clever stuff.  The photo was taken in 2022 so not that long ago.  We have arranged to take the bikes to his new workshop next week.  Progress.

A friend took this picture of a swallowtail butterfly when she and her husband came to dinner one evening.  We were sitting outside with our apéros and it flitted about on our lavender bushes.  It's the first one we have seen so far this year.

We didn't have to go and get our phones or cameras as she always has hers to hand.  Personally I don't normally keep my phone with me unless I'm using it.  If you see what I mean.

We have been to several musical evenings this year.  The opera performance in the church at Le Grand-Pressigny was pretty special.  I don't think I could sit through a whole opera these days but an hour of selected arias was a delight.  Apparently the singers are all on holiday in the area and agreed to perform for free (although a hat was passed round at the end of the performance).

All of these musical events were free.  We didn't pay an entry fee, or to park the car, or anything other than normal prices for drinks and snacks at any of them.  Welcome to France!

We are enjoying another watercolour painting course.

We have had three lots of visitors.  Our former neighbours from the UK came on their way home from a three month tour of France in their mobile home.  They have been to stay with us before when we had the little house in the village and love the area.

I did a quick trip back to the UK earlier in the month.  It was one of our regular scheduled visits to keep and eye on the place and fix any problems that have occurred during our absence.

This time, the ROP (rattly old Peugeot) was showing a warning light which said "engine fault, repair needed".  I have no idea what the problem is this time but it was running fine.  My visit had to be short because of the arrival of visitors in France so I didn't have time to do anything about it.  I parked it up on the drive as usual (battery disconnected) and Nick will take it for its MOT and find out what needs fixing next time.

Our first visitors this year were my cousin and his wife.  He has done a lot of work on our family tree.  His mother and mine were sisters so to have the information on my mother's side of the family is really good.  After she died my father researched the family tree on his parents' side and wrote a memoir about his life, which is fascinating, but contains very little in the way of information of my mother's family.

Before I went on my brief trip back to the UK I mentioned to my cousin that I have a large suitcase full of family photos and other documents that came from my dad.  I had never really looked at the contents although I had put a few other items into it just so that they were all safely in the same place.

We spent an afternoon looking through it and sharing childhood memories, something that definitely required a few pots of tea and a slice of cake, so I made a Victoria sponge.

One of the photos that my cousin brought with him was this picture of my grandmother.  He has discovered that she came from Irish parents and spent some time in Wales working in service.  She was born in Nottingham so it's a mystery how she ended up in Wales at a time when the only way to get there was probably by horse and cart.

I would guess from the photo that she was a parlour maid or something like that to a wealthy family but I don't remember her, or my mother, or my aunt, ever mentioning it.  Maybe they did and it didn't register when I was a little girl, even though I spent many a happy hour listening to them talking about "the olden days".

JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD!

An awful lot of water has gone under the bridge, literally, since my last post which was, incredibly, six weeks ago, the longest gap ever between posts I think.

So much has happened that I hardly know where to start, so I will start at the beginning!

There was so much rain over the Easter weekend that several of the local rivers flooded.

Friends of ours live in the house right in the middle of this picture.

They were rescued by the pompiers in a small inflatable boat.

The water went back down just as quickly as it came up, leaving huge devastation behind in many of the surrounding villages.

An English couple opened an art gallery in an old garage building in Le Grand-Pressigny last year.

A few weeks ago they held an exhibition of his own sculptures, made from old metal, bones, stones and otherwise unwanted objects, creating fantastic pieces of art.

This was my favourite piece.

I was surprised to learn that the frilly "collar" is literally called a ruff.

It's the base of a deer's antler.

Yvonne is now fully settled in chez nous*.  She is a delightful, feisty and friendly cat and the doubt we had at first about being able to keep her is now gone.  The doubt was because we felt that she and Hugo would never get on well enough to enable us to take her on the long journey back the the UK if we wanted (or needed) to spend more time there.  They now get along perfectly fine.  She mostly ignores him and he is the perfect gentleman around her.  

So we thought the time had come to get her a passport.  An appointment was made with the vet but when we tried to put her in her cage she absolutely refused to go in.  This was odd because she has been carried in her cage several times before but on this occasion she was not having it.  It was war!!

She fought, hissed, growled, scratched and spat.  We almost got her in but she bashed the door open and burst out.  We finally caught up with her when she was hiding under the sofa.  We tipped it backwards and I pinned her to the floor but she had shed her collar so I thought "now what am I going to do?"  

We were all very distressed so I humbly phoned the vet to explain that we wouldn't make it that day.

Other cat owners suggested how we might overcome this problem and we started by getting a bigger cage so that it was not so easy for her to block the doorway by plumping herself up and putting the anchors down.  I left it in the bedroom with the top door open and the front door off and tempted her inside with something special.  A little dish of tuna - and not the cheap stuff either!

The idea was to make the cage the only place where she gets to eat this special treat and it worked.  She gingerly went in the first time, then shot out again onto the bed where she had a look on her face which said "if you think I'm falling for that one.........."!!

However, it worked.  After a few more tins of tuna we took her to the vet's where the young female vet skillfully coaxed her out of the cage, wrapped her in a fluffy blanket and injected her in the bottom before any of us knew it had happened.  She now has her own passport and we can take her with us to the UK.  How on earth the twelve hour drive will pan out is a worry for another day!

The weather has been quite bizarre.  The winter seems to have been endless, grey, cold, wet and miserable for weeks on end.  There has been an occasional day when the sun came out and we could sit outside for a while thinking spring had arrived.  Then the wintry weather returned.

On 14th April at the brocante at Azay-le Ferron it was so hot and sunny that I got sunburned!  We had a lovely lazy barbecue mid afternoon but after three days of glorious sunshine, winter returned again!

Brocantes tend to be held on the same weekend every year in each village and I remembered that at last year's event in Azay it was perishing cold!

The sunshine brought lots of people out and some of them in their lovely old cars.

We had been looking for some old fashioned lights for the kitchen and found these.

We got two for 6€ and after a good clean and rewiring they should do the job.

I definitely don't need any more cake stands but for 2€ I couldn't resist this one.

The serving dish was also 2€.

Since my last post I have made two trips back to the UK.

The first one was planned as one of us needs to go back to the UK house every so often to comply with our insurance and to keep an eye on the place.  While I was there I went to see an ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist.

Back in January I woke up one morning with a thumping headache, a snuffly cold and awful tinnitus.  Nothing I have tried will shift it and the GP referred me to a specialist which in France is called an ONG (oreille, nez et gorge).  The soonest I could get an appointment was in six months time.  I looked online and could get an appointment with one privately (at huge expense) in Sheffield the next week.  As I was flying back to the UK anyway I decided to go for it in the hope of getting some relief but came away with more questions than answers.  A huge number of blood tests later I am still no clearer about what the cause of the problem is and I still have all the symptoms after twelve weeks.

Answers on a postcard, please.

We usually take Hugo with us to the airport and for a walk around the lake at Neuilly.

The second trip back to the UK was completely unplanned.  A broken tooth.

This tooth has broken twice before over the last five years - the first time on a prawn sandwich and the second on a fish finger sandwich.  Each time the dentist said it was fine, if it's causing no problem we can leave it.  This time the culprit was a piece of battered fish and with three of the four cusps of a back molar now gone I knew it was time to get serious.

As it happens, a friend had broken a tooth the week before and despite spending two days making phone calls and knocking on dentists' doors she was completely unable to get an appointment in France.  She had to go back to the UK to see her own usual dentist.  I already knew that finding a dentist in France is just as impossible as in the UK unless you are already registered with one so I decided not to waste time trying.  Thank goodness for Ryanair!

I have to wonder how people in France cope if they need a dentist urgently and can't find one.  Another friend said one of the Ukrainians that have settled locally after being displaced by the war had to go back to Ukraine to get dental treatment.  That really is desperate.

I left home at 5.30am to get my flight and at 3.00pm I came out of the dentist's surgery feeling pretty wobbly.  I'll spare you the gory details.

On the way home I called for some groceries and something easy to eat for dinner.  I spotted some tins of HP baked beans.  They came in packs of four at less than 50p a tin and with a sore and numb mouth were ideal for my supper.

I hadn't seen HP baked beans for decades although I do remember eating them as a child and teenager.  I had no idea that HP still made them.  It turns out that they are just as good as Heinz (IMHO).  So I decided to pack the three unopened tins to bring back with me.  I also spotted some tins of mushy peas in the cupboard so decided to pack those as well.  I also packed a small bag of rhubarb from the garden.  Cramming it all into my little bag took ages.

I had travelled with the minimum baggage - just one small bag that has to be tucked under the seat in front on the plane.  My bag met the stringent Ryaniar size requirements but was well stuffed.  As I got through the security lane I saw the tray containing my shoes and coat, and the second one containing my iPad and phone come towards me.  Then the third containing my well stuffed bag was directed to the other conveyor for inspection.  Drat!

When it came to my turn the lady with the explosives detector asked me to open my bag and I thought it must be because of the rhubarb.  "It's the rhubarb, isn't it?" I said weakly and she gave me one of those withering looks reserved for very daft people.

It turns out it was the beans.  To see someone wiping your tins of beans with an explosive detection wipe which then has to be disposed of carefully and correctly is an interesting experience.  I didn't know whether to laugh or cry and as she pushed the overflowing tray of stuff towards me I had the intense desire to become invisible.  As I walked away, wondering how I was going to get all this stuff back into my bag, the man next in the queue for inspection said "you got away with the rhubarb then!"  That was the moment I was reminded of the expression "just because you can doesn't mean you should"!

*As I wrote the last two paragraphs of this post Yvonne was sitting on the mouse mat with one paw across my wrist.  Numerous typos have had to be corrected.

JUST BECAUSE WE CAN

Winters in our part of France are slightly better than winters in our part of the UK, the weather frequently being drier, less cold and without the risk of snow.

It's a time for taking stock, doing a few repairs and a bit of gardening if weather permits.

There is stuff going on.  We had friends round for a Burns Night Supper at the end of January for example.  When two Australians, a bemused American lady, two English (us), a Dutch/American and the one Scots person get together for a bit of a do it's bound to be a good laugh!

There's a Mardi Gras evening at a friend's house coming up next week.

Curry night at the new bistrot in the village later this week.

In fact, realistically, there is more going on here than we would find in the UK.

A few months ago I was introduced to an elderly Englishman who has lived around here for decades.  I had never seen him before even though we have by now had a house in the area for seventeen years.

Seventeen years !!

The person who introduced us said the man was a bit of a hermit and didn't get out much.  The man himself said he didn't like that all the expats go round to each other's houses all the time.  He thought it too stereotypical expat behaviour and wondered why we do it.

I said it was just because we can!

We are slightly envious of friends who have decamped to warmer climes for the months of January and February.  Some to Portugal, some to Hawaii.  

But we do what we can.

We invite people round to our house and we get invited round to theirs!

The weather has been rather dull lately so I've resorted to posting more pictures of our trip to the beautiful city of Tours a few weeks ago.

We are so lucky to have such a place on our doorstep, only a shortish drive or bus ride away.

A day out in Tours, especially if it includes a bit of shopping and a good lunch, always cheers us up in winter.  Or any other time of year.

We go there every so often, whether we need to or not, just because we can.

It's nice to see a bit of colour, a bit of human activity.

A change of scenery.  Even if it's city life not actual scenery.

Tours has a tram system to carry people into the city centre.

In reality, the city centre is very easy to access by car, train or bus.

But one day we will take a ride on the tram, just because we can.

Yvonne continues to settle in, daring me to turf her off the bed so I can make it.

The other evening when it was very still, not a breath of wind, but cold, we fished the fire pit out of the barn, lit it and sat out for a while, in the dark.

Just because we can.

The French passers by in their cars must by now be thoroughly convinced that their English neighbours are, in fact, completely nuts !!

DUNG (FOR WANT OF A BETTER WORD) AND UNWELCOME POST

Our house in France is essentially in the middle of a field.  The front part is our own bit of field; the garden and drive between the house and the road.  The rest of the field was sold off to a nearby farmer who knows how many decades ago.  His land effectively comes right up to the walls of the house along the back and the two sides but he leaves us a walkway when he cultivates it.  He also owns and cultivates an enormous field across the road so our own little bit of paradise is basically an island in the middle of a huge plot of land owned by one farmer.  This year he has grown nothing on any of this land.

Back in April he spread weed killer on all of it then over the following few weeks he created three huge piles of dung (cow manure).  Since then we have been surrounded by dung heaps!

They ponged for a few days after each truckload of dung was added to a pile, and for several weeks we were inundated with flies inside and outside the house.  Living in the countryside has its challenges!

We knew that sooner or later he would do something with this dung and sure enough, yesterday morning he turned up with his digger and tractor with the muck spreader attached.  Of all the agricultural processes we have to live with, muck spreading is the one I dread the most!

Unfortunately he picked a time when we had visitors.  However, they are young and fairly laid back about most things so we still barbecued and sat out late.  

He parked his muckspreader in the gateway directly opposite the house as he left to go home late in the evening, gave us a cheery wave and wished us a pleasant evening!  

I am a bit concerned about one of our new air conditioning units.  The one that serves our bedroom is perched well above ground but the engineers put the other one actually on the ground because the wall of the house just there was too uneven to mount it higher up.

Most agricultural processes result in some kind of stuff being flung about and I'm worried that the lower one might get damaged.  Nick thinks it will be fine but I'm not so sure so I have placed a sheet of old cardboard over it for when he spreads the muck on the back field.  If the cardboard remains untouched all will be well but if it ends up splattered we will have to either build some kind of screen around it or get the engineers back to try harder to mount it higher up.  

Still speaking of dung, yesterday some unwelcome post arrived.

Our lovely neighbours in the UK keep an eye on our house there and once a week check the post.  We usually decide what is worth sending on to us here and decided that an unfamiliar looking letter was worth a look.

It was a parking fine for me from my visit in July.

On my last day there I had arranged to meet a former work colleague at a Starbucks cafe which was on her way home from work and convenient to both of us.  The restaurant is in a small retail park just off the M1 and serves as a motorway services.  She was held up at work and a bit late arriving but we had a nice long catch up over a couple of coffees.

The fine is because I stayed ten minutes longer than the time allowed for free.  The parking spaces right outside the door of the cafe are owned by someone who employs a car parking company to collect ludicrously high charges for people who stay too long.  £60 if I pay within fourteen days and £100 if not.

They turned out to be expensive cups of coffee and illustrate one of the saddest things about what is happening in the UK.  There are rip off schemes and scams in everything.

While our young visitors have been here we have taken them all over this part of France and parked in plentiful car parks entirely for free.