Saturday, 30 March 2019
Monday, 25 February 2019
The Archbishop of Canterbury ...
... is preparing the United Kingdom for five days of prayer after Brexit.
Surely, five days of prayer BEFORE Brexit would be more appropriate. Then, who knows, we might achieve a miracle.
Talking of miracles, the front door of the cottage has been open for days as we let the dogs wander in and out at will in this glorious sunshine. We mow, prune, weed and stop frequently to say how unbelievable the weather is. I suspect we should be more worried than we are about climate change, but against the background gloom of Brexit, in this blessed warmth, it's hard to be anything other than happy and grateful that there is something to smile about.
Surely, five days of prayer BEFORE Brexit would be more appropriate. Then, who knows, we might achieve a miracle.
Talking of miracles, the front door of the cottage has been open for days as we let the dogs wander in and out at will in this glorious sunshine. We mow, prune, weed and stop frequently to say how unbelievable the weather is. I suspect we should be more worried than we are about climate change, but against the background gloom of Brexit, in this blessed warmth, it's hard to be anything other than happy and grateful that there is something to smile about.
Sunday, 3 February 2019
Dig Deeper!
I send out a distressed round robin email to everyone we know who is either DIY competent or a builder. We dug down to the suggested 50 cm and still no sign of the red warning netting over the mains electric cable.
Back comes the universal message "dig deeper". But how much deeper? My heart sinks.
Then Ian's email arrived: "Cable is normally a minimum of 50 cm but if put in with a digger it could be a lot deeper, but normally no more than 75 cm, but if ground goes up and down can be deeper at some points, mesh is normally around 20 cm above cable, so should find it first." Now that I can manage - I've already dug 50 cm. Another 25 cm is only half that! With renewed enthusiasm I get back in the trench with pick axe and trowel.
Within ten minutes, down at 80 cm a tiny corner of bright red webbing emerges from the clay. Joy of joys. I bounce back into the kitchen to tell Tod the good news. We check another two holes and again, at last, the warning netting coyly appears - so now we know the route the cable is following and a call to Ian yields the promise of a visit with a digger to put in the French drain to divert the rain water away from the cottage.
He finally finds the cable itself at 120cm depth - our Polish builders obviously thought they were installing power in the Tundra. A nick through the protective ducting shows the importance of what we're doing. Water immediately starts to seep out and along the new drain.
The cottage heating has been on for over a week now to help dry out the wiring under the floor. With almost continuous rain these last days the work has been done just in time. Standing in the hallway, the cottage envelopes us in warmth. And there is a blissful absence of the sound of dripping water from inside the electricity meter cupboard.
We've decided it's time to go back down to the cottage for what's left of winter. There's even a hint of early morning sun to help with the move.
Back comes the universal message "dig deeper". But how much deeper? My heart sinks.
Then Ian's email arrived: "Cable is normally a minimum of 50 cm but if put in with a digger it could be a lot deeper, but normally no more than 75 cm, but if ground goes up and down can be deeper at some points, mesh is normally around 20 cm above cable, so should find it first." Now that I can manage - I've already dug 50 cm. Another 25 cm is only half that! With renewed enthusiasm I get back in the trench with pick axe and trowel.
Within ten minutes, down at 80 cm a tiny corner of bright red webbing emerges from the clay. Joy of joys. I bounce back into the kitchen to tell Tod the good news. We check another two holes and again, at last, the warning netting coyly appears - so now we know the route the cable is following and a call to Ian yields the promise of a visit with a digger to put in the French drain to divert the rain water away from the cottage.
He finally finds the cable itself at 120cm depth - our Polish builders obviously thought they were installing power in the Tundra. A nick through the protective ducting shows the importance of what we're doing. Water immediately starts to seep out and along the new drain.
The cottage heating has been on for over a week now to help dry out the wiring under the floor. With almost continuous rain these last days the work has been done just in time. Standing in the hallway, the cottage envelopes us in warmth. And there is a blissful absence of the sound of dripping water from inside the electricity meter cupboard.
We've decided it's time to go back down to the cottage for what's left of winter. There's even a hint of early morning sun to help with the move.
Sunday, 6 January 2019
So, the decorations are down ...
... packed in plastic crates and waiting to go up into the loft.
The lounge looks denuded and needs a good hoover. Bits of that long fine shiny stuff that everyone used to drape over Christmas trees (no, not tinsel) get everywhere and there are always one or two pieces that only emerge once everything has been tidied. Bertie rolls on the carpet and then walks away with glitter in his fur.
Before I finally say farewell to Christmas 2018, some photos I took at our neighbouring farmer's house. First time I've been through their door (only taken 11 years) and he and his wife proudly showed me their conservatory - filled with a "Village de Noël". They told me it takes about a week to put up and take down. Unlike in the UK, there isn't the tradition here of taking down decorations on twelfth night. Perhaps as well! She tells me her village will stay in place for another couple of weeks.
It's difficult to do it justice with still photos. Many of the models move: roundabouts, skaters, an airship, a train, windmills. Lights flash and Christmas carols pipe in competition with one another through tinny (and tiny) speakers. She has been collecting the models since her now grown-up children were babies and admits to being addicted. I'm not surprised.
The lounge looks denuded and needs a good hoover. Bits of that long fine shiny stuff that everyone used to drape over Christmas trees (no, not tinsel) get everywhere and there are always one or two pieces that only emerge once everything has been tidied. Bertie rolls on the carpet and then walks away with glitter in his fur.
Before I finally say farewell to Christmas 2018, some photos I took at our neighbouring farmer's house. First time I've been through their door (only taken 11 years) and he and his wife proudly showed me their conservatory - filled with a "Village de Noël". They told me it takes about a week to put up and take down. Unlike in the UK, there isn't the tradition here of taking down decorations on twelfth night. Perhaps as well! She tells me her village will stay in place for another couple of weeks.
It's difficult to do it justice with still photos. Many of the models move: roundabouts, skaters, an airship, a train, windmills. Lights flash and Christmas carols pipe in competition with one another through tinny (and tiny) speakers. She has been collecting the models since her now grown-up children were babies and admits to being addicted. I'm not surprised.
Saturday, 5 January 2019
We Need a Dowser!
Despite the fact that it's winter (and very frosty) we are doing the best we can to stay warm in the house. The cottage meanwhile is standing forlorn, empty and chilly with the power off.
Before Christmas, harking back to our flood in the hall last January, we thought it would be a good idea while the weather was still mild and dry to locate the mains cable under ground and do something fancy with pipes and drainage ditches to direct the rain water flowing through the ducting away from the cottage.
How hard could it be? After all, I took a couple of photos when the builders were laying the cable. Both pictures show the red netting that is laid in the trench so that anyone digging has an early warning of what lies beneath.
Where the cable passes in front of the cottage we now have a concrete pathway. And that's also the same territory where the pipe to our septic tank goes, not to mention the rainwater from the gutters to our large underground tank. So to dig in that area seemed like folly and we moved to higher ground, using the right hand photo for guidance which shows the trench dug from the electricity pole diagonally across what used to be Serge's land, down the slope towards the cottage.
SEVEN holes later, we are still no nearer finding the cable!
It looks like the Time Team* has taken over. We expect to bump into Tony Robinson and a camera crew any day now.
And we now understand why it is the builders we asked to do the work for us have all been unexpectedly busy.
* Programme on British TV that follows archaeological digs over a three day period. Tony Robinson is the presenter.
Before Christmas, harking back to our flood in the hall last January, we thought it would be a good idea while the weather was still mild and dry to locate the mains cable under ground and do something fancy with pipes and drainage ditches to direct the rain water flowing through the ducting away from the cottage.
How hard could it be? After all, I took a couple of photos when the builders were laying the cable. Both pictures show the red netting that is laid in the trench so that anyone digging has an early warning of what lies beneath.
Where the cable passes in front of the cottage we now have a concrete pathway. And that's also the same territory where the pipe to our septic tank goes, not to mention the rainwater from the gutters to our large underground tank. So to dig in that area seemed like folly and we moved to higher ground, using the right hand photo for guidance which shows the trench dug from the electricity pole diagonally across what used to be Serge's land, down the slope towards the cottage.
SEVEN holes later, we are still no nearer finding the cable!
It looks like the Time Team* has taken over. We expect to bump into Tony Robinson and a camera crew any day now.
And we now understand why it is the builders we asked to do the work for us have all been unexpectedly busy.
* Programme on British TV that follows archaeological digs over a three day period. Tony Robinson is the presenter.
Tuesday, 25 December 2018
Saturday, 22 December 2018
Tod was Lucky
Christmas Day we will spend with friends. Christmas Eve is just us and a traditional Polish evening meal. It's a day of fasting and abstinence in the Catholic calendar, so the break fast happens at the first star and the meal is fish. Traditionally in Poland the fish is carp - bony and pretty tasteless. I think I had it once, many years ago, when Tod prepared a meal for his mother, sister and her children. We've always agreed since: "not carp".
So it's usually something like monkfish or a meaty piece of "dos de cabillaud" (fillet of cod). The challenge is that the French (also following a day of fasting and abstinence) opt for seafood. So from now onwards great swathes of the fish counter in Leclerc are given over to huge platters of mussels, prawns, oysters, crabs, lobsters, clams. Boxes and boxes of oysters are stacked in great piles. And the white fish vanishes from sight.
This morning's early dog walk was close-by the Garonne on the edge of town and not wanting to make the car journey twice, Tod nipped into Leclerc to buy the cod on his way home.
He was lucky. As he was leaving, the Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) were setting up their barriers on the same roundabout where I got caught a month ago. These are not "casseurs" (a new word I learnt through all of this meaning hooligan) but just local guys who are very, very fed up with the way their central government has been treating them and they are just not giving up or going away.
Tough though on anyone who has only this weekend to prepare for Christmas.
So it's usually something like monkfish or a meaty piece of "dos de cabillaud" (fillet of cod). The challenge is that the French (also following a day of fasting and abstinence) opt for seafood. So from now onwards great swathes of the fish counter in Leclerc are given over to huge platters of mussels, prawns, oysters, crabs, lobsters, clams. Boxes and boxes of oysters are stacked in great piles. And the white fish vanishes from sight.
This morning's early dog walk was close-by the Garonne on the edge of town and not wanting to make the car journey twice, Tod nipped into Leclerc to buy the cod on his way home.
He was lucky. As he was leaving, the Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) were setting up their barriers on the same roundabout where I got caught a month ago. These are not "casseurs" (a new word I learnt through all of this meaning hooligan) but just local guys who are very, very fed up with the way their central government has been treating them and they are just not giving up or going away.
Tough though on anyone who has only this weekend to prepare for Christmas.
Monday, 17 December 2018
Feet
My role in life has become keeping the medical profession in full employment.
If it isn't teeth it's eyes. And if it isn't eyes it's feet. Today, it's feet.
Do you remember the large brown x-ray machines in shoe shops? A lifetime ago. As children, my mother always insisted we wore "sensible" shoes - Startrite I seem to remember. The giant advert on the walls at tube stations of two small children, hand-in-hand marching away from us along an endless road, a perfect image of me and my brother.
The man with the brown box - I was always a little nervous of putting my foot into the black hole (a touch prescient maybe) - informed my mother I had "expensive" feet. How right he was!
Apart from a relatively brief irresponsible moment in my late teens and early twenties when my father despaired of the impact of my stilettos on the lounge parquet flooring, I have, on the whole, continued with my mother's advice ringing in my ears to wear sensible shoes. So, I find it hard now to be lumbered with a set of aching clodhoppers that our new GP recoiled from exclaiming "deformés" several times when he asked me to remove my socks. (It particularly rankles that Tod has such beautifully straight feet.)
Still, our less than tactful GP gave me a prescription for some orthotic insoles and I headed for the best podiatrist in the whole of Lot-et-Garonne. Somehow, shoving little coloured wedges of differing heights under my heels and insteps, bonding them all into scruffy grey insoles and with fearsome instructions to wear them always, the podiatrist has done it.
My feet may still be clodhoppers but at least they no longer hurt. Today, three months later, the foot-man is proud of me (and himself) exclaiming "superbe!" at least half a dozen times as he asks me to stand and walk. So much more encouraging than "deformés".
Basking in my new-found sense of well-being, I contemplate even going so far as to buy some new (sensible of course) Merrell's sandals for next summer.
As I leave, we shake hands and wish each other "bonnes fêtes". He tells me to come back in a year - but then hastens to say if I need to see him in the meantime, not to hesitate to do so. Ah, of course, I must always be mindful of my new role in life!
If it isn't teeth it's eyes. And if it isn't eyes it's feet. Today, it's feet.
Do you remember the large brown x-ray machines in shoe shops? A lifetime ago. As children, my mother always insisted we wore "sensible" shoes - Startrite I seem to remember. The giant advert on the walls at tube stations of two small children, hand-in-hand marching away from us along an endless road, a perfect image of me and my brother.
The man with the brown box - I was always a little nervous of putting my foot into the black hole (a touch prescient maybe) - informed my mother I had "expensive" feet. How right he was!
Apart from a relatively brief irresponsible moment in my late teens and early twenties when my father despaired of the impact of my stilettos on the lounge parquet flooring, I have, on the whole, continued with my mother's advice ringing in my ears to wear sensible shoes. So, I find it hard now to be lumbered with a set of aching clodhoppers that our new GP recoiled from exclaiming "deformés" several times when he asked me to remove my socks. (It particularly rankles that Tod has such beautifully straight feet.)
Still, our less than tactful GP gave me a prescription for some orthotic insoles and I headed for the best podiatrist in the whole of Lot-et-Garonne. Somehow, shoving little coloured wedges of differing heights under my heels and insteps, bonding them all into scruffy grey insoles and with fearsome instructions to wear them always, the podiatrist has done it.
My feet may still be clodhoppers but at least they no longer hurt. Today, three months later, the foot-man is proud of me (and himself) exclaiming "superbe!" at least half a dozen times as he asks me to stand and walk. So much more encouraging than "deformés".
Basking in my new-found sense of well-being, I contemplate even going so far as to buy some new (sensible of course) Merrell's sandals for next summer.
As I leave, we shake hands and wish each other "bonnes fêtes". He tells me to come back in a year - but then hastens to say if I need to see him in the meantime, not to hesitate to do so. Ah, of course, I must always be mindful of my new role in life!
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