1st May 2011
Dear All
Missive 29 attached, and yes I know I just missed the end of the month but I think it explains itself!!
Also, sending it to coincide with the May Day Bank holiday and after all the excitement of someone or other’s wedding has died down, will give you plenty of time to read it – and it’s only shortish!!
Love
Roger
rogerhiggs@hotmail.co.uk
Shortly to be slightly further west (approx 3 km) and up a bit (1 ½ km north),
oh!, and down a bit (10 m elevation)!!!
Mes chers amis
“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at.” (with thanks to the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland!) ~ Missive 29
"There’s so little time and so much to do, There’s so little time for dreams to come true.
Many a ship to sail, many a magic land, Many a moonlit trail, many a road to walk hand in hand”From the song “So Little Time (So Much to Do)” on the Louis Armstrong album “Pocket Full of Dreams”.
“Gardening requires lots of water, most of it in the form of perspiration!”
Lou Erickson
“Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it!”
Author Unknown (but very wise!!)
The first quote explains the amazingly “short” length of this missive, the other two explain it further, as I sit my back sticky with sweat after another two hour workout in the garden, seeking rest and recuperation on the keypad. So this time, it’s to be a small offering with little of the wit, scintillating comments and in depth observations of human live that you have hopefully come to expect. But, as you read on you may realise that this is what you will have to get used to, as shortly we’ll be “back to work” replacing hours spent with wire cutters, sickles and sledge hammers, interspersed with numerous trips to the nearby tip, where we have become such regular customers that the “waste operative” there greets us like long lost friends and before helping us unload must shake hands and pass the time of day, with paint brushes, screwdrivers, saws, hammers and further aching backs, legs and arms!!
England!
As you may remember, we have just had a couple of weeks back in dear old blightly, managing to escape just before “the wedding,” but my plans to declare a “wedding-free zone” were thwarted, as when I returned from a couple of hours working up a sweat in the garden and with another trip to the tip, I found Linda and my Mum and Dad who have returned with us for a couple of weeks, huddled secretively around the computer, waiting to see the dress and the kiss on the balcony! All sounds a little like a BBC repeat!!
Well, we had a busy couple of weeks, including something of a busman’s holiday doing various jobs for my Mum and Dad in their house and garden. But we also managed to tie the visit in with a warden meeting I needed to attend in Broadway, a flying visit to Stroud and also caught up with most of the family, for much of the time there were between 7 and 11 people sitting down for meals, so lots of cooking, eating, drinking and missing the dishwasher!!
Then there was the visit to B and Q for the paint – paint in France being both very expensive and very poor quality, even if carrying the same brand name. The list was very long, a trailer load in fact and we were delighted to find a “three for two” offer on all paint as well as a very helpful and knowledgeable sales assistant who pointed us in the right direction for the best buys and quality, to the point of rubbishing one of B & Q’s own paint lines, recommending a different line for nearly the same price!
We went to the till with two trolleys piled high, due to the offer we had rounded up to three when with some we only needed two, well the third was free – or was it!?! Having paid for the goods and scrutinising the bill, we found we had saved £77 instead of the £113 we were expecting and off we went to Customers Services for an explanation, which was simply that it was a “mix and match” offer so you got the cheapest items free!! So, the manager was summoned, who wasn’t particularly helpful, but did agreed that if we returned the goods and made a number of separate purchases we would indeed save the expected amount, and this is what we did, fortunately not having to return into the store, but all being dealt with by the man in customer services, who by the end of it all quite understood how sensible we were to save all that extra money!!
So the journey back included a paint packed trailer with a wheelbarrow strapped on top, lashed on by a huge quantity of rope, so we were very relieved not to have to untie it all for the trailer to be inspected, and a very laden car with barely enough space for my parents – they would I’m sure have had more room on a budget airline!! But safely back the car load was added to the growing mound of “things for the new house,” thank goodness that our “cave de chauffage” (boiler house) has a floor area well in excess of a squash court!!
One day perhaps we’ll just have time in England to catch up with everyone!!
Such snatched moments will now be of the upmost importance!
One of those all too rare magical “stolen” mornings – I’m not normally up in time, but then if I always got up at this time, I guess some of the magic would dissipate anyway! Written as it flowed from the pen having returned to the warmth of the house and a welcome cuppa!
“Call me a lunatic, 7.00 a.m., quick nip to the loo and as I didn’t need to be up, back to a nice warm bed!! But then I saw the fantastic moon (it was the time of the moon being particularly close to the earth and therefore seemingly extra large!), waning but just one day off the full, dipping majestically down behind the chateau out back! Not wanting to miss the photo opportunity, it was a quick throwing on of a few clothes and off at breakneck speed, surrounded by the early twitterings of the dawn chorus, as the moon was going rapidly.
Several shots, with the camera, later and I was behind the chateau near to its large lake, when I realised that the multitude of fritillaries that were at that time bedecking the hay meadow, were clothed with a fine layer of frost, and I realised that my own clothing was painfully inadequate for the chill of this particular early morning!
But, as I came back round the chateau and headed back to the house for a warming cup of tea, with the cuckoo cuckooing and the woodpecker alternatively tapping and screeching, that I noticed that the sun was just beginning to lift clear of the distance trees and beautifully illuminating the “iconic tree” that sits on the bank of the pond at the bottom of the field opposite our house. The splendour of the morning won over the cup of tea, for half an hour or so necessitating numerous more photo shots, at which the inquisitive cows in the field the other side of the lane came over to see what was happening. Maybe it was the sense of occasion, but I had a long conversation with the cows – in French, and covering a wealth of topics including the moon, the sun, the previous cold night and how I wasn’t coming bearing gifts and how there seemed to be the promise of a great morning to follow – who said the vocabulary wasn’t improving!? Over the delayed cuppa, I mused about; the sun, the moon and the long conversation I had already had that morning and noted that for once even the rather aloof bull hung on my every word!!”
The House!
In some ways not a lot has changed, the compromis signed we are now awaiting the “act de vente” which will make the house formally ours and we can start to do things inside, as opposed to the jungle bashing you’ll read about in the next section.
However, we have begun to get artisans in to give us “devis” (quotations) for the electrical / plumbing work, which we are hoping to get started as quickly as possible after we finally officially “get the key,” although unofficially and we’re not allowed to tell anyone, we have a key to allow access for the artisans, which has proved great for showing visitors our new abode.
Those who haven’t yet seen the house have commented that the various communications have a dearth of photos of the inside of the house. Well, quite simply there’s really not much to see, it’s basically a blank canvas, albeit a rather dirty one!
We did initially think we had a few mice that had made the most of the house being empty for the last few years and moved in! It was however, rather a mystery why the piles of droppings were confined to the corners of the rooms or under little niches. Then, when we showing an electrician around the house, out from the workshop flew what initially we thought was a small bird, but closer examination revealed it to be a bat, flitting happily around the house between all the rooms as it had obviously done for the last few years. Hopefully, shutting the interconnecting doors will discourage it in the future, but at the moment we’ll hang on to the comment made by the electrician – “In France it is considered lucky to have a bat in the house!” As with many things a bit different in France than in England, where the presence of a bat, although perhaps rather exciting, could be anything but lucky, necessitating the cessation of work and the need for a professional bat survey before being able to continue work!!
Now, it’s simply a case of wanting to get in and start the cleaning and subsequent painting – as I said above the paint (specially imported from the UK) is in the cave, waiting with baited breath. But in the meantime we’ll have to work up a sweat and hope that the back gets used to it before the enthusiasm wanes ~ that’s then the garden sorted!!!
The Garden!
Seventy plus “person hours” and we’ve hacked and sweated, pushed and pulled and been scratched and stung and have finally found the garden, well, three corners of the five it contains, and the others are within striking distance!! The jungle bashing discovered what was almost like a lost world, because as well as large head high bramble patches, there were a number of ham built animal sheds and runs; ham built but fortress-like, with multiple layers of chicken wire or thicker fencing wire, knitted together with thick wire or barbed wire strands or thick rot resistant binder twine and fastened to the uprights and random cross pieces by large staples, or bend over four inch or bigger nails. Sandwiched in the layers of wire were thin concrete slabs, corrugated iron or black plastic sheeting, with the whole held down by being set into concrete that was set into the ground, and with large areas of corrugated roofing nailed on top where the animals could sleep or roost!
The whole was then surrounded by a multi-layered fence interwoven with thick black polythene, topped with at least one strand of barbed wire. We have heard that the previous inhabitant had had a long deep-seated feud with one of the other residents of the hamlet, and it was almost as if every time the warring factions had words, another layer of “defence” was added. In a similar fashion, there are a number of hastily boarded / bricked up windows in the house, including a couple of what we see as authentic and architectural features.
But, we’ll get there; we have to, to be able to get the caravan into the garden and I’ve already started to dig up one patch of bramble / nettle roots and thistles ready for some veg planting – at the very least I want to have some courgettes and potatoes! Then one day we’ll be able to sit down under the ancient spreading vine we hacked through to, that will provide dappled shade for our new sitting area – well at times like this you need imagination and the ability to dream and maybe a sense of humour!!!
¡qué un sorpresa!
What a surprise it was indeed, as we pulled up outside our house and found that Monsieur from the chateau was back from Spain and seemingly to stay as he had put out his bins. A day or so later he realised we were back, when Toutoune went missing and was obviously around at our place, he rushed around and greeted us like long lost friend, warmly shaking my hand as I tried out my newly revised Spanish greeting and kissing Linda on both cheeks, whilst saying how pleased he was we were going to stay in St Laurent for ever, so we could be friends for ever, and telling us that even once we had moved we were now his friends and could walk in the chateau grounds whenever we wanted!
The following quick five minute chat ended up as an hour and a half cup of tea, as we picked up from last summer; it was as if he hadn’t been away for any time, let alone over seven months. It promises to be a long fun-filled summer, when we are not doing house renovations!! We also couldn’t help but feel that the poor winter weather in Spain was a good excuse, when actually spending time with us before we move, might have featured in the decision to migrant north much earlier than normal
“Ici devant nous!”
Actually this time possibly not! As the “processionary pine moth caterpillars” should really live further south, but are moving northwards, but after we moved south!!
I’m sure many of you will be aware that certain hairy caterpillars contain irritant hairs, and writing this I’m reminded of a particular campsite, in southern Brittany, where we were inundated by SAS style caterpillars that abseiled in vast numbers down from the many trees. Unfortunately, once they managed to abseil between my neck and shirt collar, then became squashed between my back and the chair making for an irritating rash for a couple of days.
But the processionary caterpillars are in a league of their own and without wishing to be alarmist – potential killers!! The first sign, in spring are light coloured web-like cocoons swinging in the tree tops. These are caterpillar nests, from which the caterpillars march out, nose to tail in single file and lines of up to sixty, to feed on pine needles, leaving a pheromone trail to find the way back to the nest.
The nests damage the trees and the advice is to carefully cut them off and burn them, but even when dead they are dangerous. The caterpillars have fine hairs on their backs which contains a protein that causes severe irritation and dermatitis and can cause anaphylactic shock to both humans and animals, and if eaten by cats and dogs can kill them so quickly that there may not be time to reach a vet. The symptoms include vomiting, swelling of the tongue, staggering and breathing difficulties. If you come across them, as we did recently, best to leave them alone as they can release these dangerous hairs with the risk of subsequent poisoning!
My original “thought!”
The English call it “Wickedness,” the French “Pleasure!” ~ the jam on the morning croissant!! I’ve always said we could learn a thing or two from the French, but on the other hand their beer isn’t as good!!
Kind regards, Best Wishes and Love,
Roger and Linda
And, next time? Whatever the spade unearths as well as fighting with a large snake!!!
Dear All
Missive 29 attached, and yes I know I just missed the end of the month but I think it explains itself!!
Also, sending it to coincide with the May Day Bank holiday and after all the excitement of someone or other’s wedding has died down, will give you plenty of time to read it – and it’s only shortish!!
Love
Roger
rogerhiggs@hotmail.co.uk
Shortly to be slightly further west (approx 3 km) and up a bit (1 ½ km north),
oh!, and down a bit (10 m elevation)!!!
Mes chers amis
“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at.” (with thanks to the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland!) ~ Missive 29
"There’s so little time and so much to do, There’s so little time for dreams to come true.
Many a ship to sail, many a magic land, Many a moonlit trail, many a road to walk hand in hand”From the song “So Little Time (So Much to Do)” on the Louis Armstrong album “Pocket Full of Dreams”.
“Gardening requires lots of water, most of it in the form of perspiration!”
Lou Erickson
“Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it!”
Author Unknown (but very wise!!)
The first quote explains the amazingly “short” length of this missive, the other two explain it further, as I sit my back sticky with sweat after another two hour workout in the garden, seeking rest and recuperation on the keypad. So this time, it’s to be a small offering with little of the wit, scintillating comments and in depth observations of human live that you have hopefully come to expect. But, as you read on you may realise that this is what you will have to get used to, as shortly we’ll be “back to work” replacing hours spent with wire cutters, sickles and sledge hammers, interspersed with numerous trips to the nearby tip, where we have become such regular customers that the “waste operative” there greets us like long lost friends and before helping us unload must shake hands and pass the time of day, with paint brushes, screwdrivers, saws, hammers and further aching backs, legs and arms!!
England!
As you may remember, we have just had a couple of weeks back in dear old blightly, managing to escape just before “the wedding,” but my plans to declare a “wedding-free zone” were thwarted, as when I returned from a couple of hours working up a sweat in the garden and with another trip to the tip, I found Linda and my Mum and Dad who have returned with us for a couple of weeks, huddled secretively around the computer, waiting to see the dress and the kiss on the balcony! All sounds a little like a BBC repeat!!
Well, we had a busy couple of weeks, including something of a busman’s holiday doing various jobs for my Mum and Dad in their house and garden. But we also managed to tie the visit in with a warden meeting I needed to attend in Broadway, a flying visit to Stroud and also caught up with most of the family, for much of the time there were between 7 and 11 people sitting down for meals, so lots of cooking, eating, drinking and missing the dishwasher!!
Then there was the visit to B and Q for the paint – paint in France being both very expensive and very poor quality, even if carrying the same brand name. The list was very long, a trailer load in fact and we were delighted to find a “three for two” offer on all paint as well as a very helpful and knowledgeable sales assistant who pointed us in the right direction for the best buys and quality, to the point of rubbishing one of B & Q’s own paint lines, recommending a different line for nearly the same price!
We went to the till with two trolleys piled high, due to the offer we had rounded up to three when with some we only needed two, well the third was free – or was it!?! Having paid for the goods and scrutinising the bill, we found we had saved £77 instead of the £113 we were expecting and off we went to Customers Services for an explanation, which was simply that it was a “mix and match” offer so you got the cheapest items free!! So, the manager was summoned, who wasn’t particularly helpful, but did agreed that if we returned the goods and made a number of separate purchases we would indeed save the expected amount, and this is what we did, fortunately not having to return into the store, but all being dealt with by the man in customer services, who by the end of it all quite understood how sensible we were to save all that extra money!!
So the journey back included a paint packed trailer with a wheelbarrow strapped on top, lashed on by a huge quantity of rope, so we were very relieved not to have to untie it all for the trailer to be inspected, and a very laden car with barely enough space for my parents – they would I’m sure have had more room on a budget airline!! But safely back the car load was added to the growing mound of “things for the new house,” thank goodness that our “cave de chauffage” (boiler house) has a floor area well in excess of a squash court!!
One day perhaps we’ll just have time in England to catch up with everyone!!
Such snatched moments will now be of the upmost importance!
One of those all too rare magical “stolen” mornings – I’m not normally up in time, but then if I always got up at this time, I guess some of the magic would dissipate anyway! Written as it flowed from the pen having returned to the warmth of the house and a welcome cuppa!
“Call me a lunatic, 7.00 a.m., quick nip to the loo and as I didn’t need to be up, back to a nice warm bed!! But then I saw the fantastic moon (it was the time of the moon being particularly close to the earth and therefore seemingly extra large!), waning but just one day off the full, dipping majestically down behind the chateau out back! Not wanting to miss the photo opportunity, it was a quick throwing on of a few clothes and off at breakneck speed, surrounded by the early twitterings of the dawn chorus, as the moon was going rapidly.
Several shots, with the camera, later and I was behind the chateau near to its large lake, when I realised that the multitude of fritillaries that were at that time bedecking the hay meadow, were clothed with a fine layer of frost, and I realised that my own clothing was painfully inadequate for the chill of this particular early morning!
But, as I came back round the chateau and headed back to the house for a warming cup of tea, with the cuckoo cuckooing and the woodpecker alternatively tapping and screeching, that I noticed that the sun was just beginning to lift clear of the distance trees and beautifully illuminating the “iconic tree” that sits on the bank of the pond at the bottom of the field opposite our house. The splendour of the morning won over the cup of tea, for half an hour or so necessitating numerous more photo shots, at which the inquisitive cows in the field the other side of the lane came over to see what was happening. Maybe it was the sense of occasion, but I had a long conversation with the cows – in French, and covering a wealth of topics including the moon, the sun, the previous cold night and how I wasn’t coming bearing gifts and how there seemed to be the promise of a great morning to follow – who said the vocabulary wasn’t improving!? Over the delayed cuppa, I mused about; the sun, the moon and the long conversation I had already had that morning and noted that for once even the rather aloof bull hung on my every word!!”
The House!
In some ways not a lot has changed, the compromis signed we are now awaiting the “act de vente” which will make the house formally ours and we can start to do things inside, as opposed to the jungle bashing you’ll read about in the next section.
However, we have begun to get artisans in to give us “devis” (quotations) for the electrical / plumbing work, which we are hoping to get started as quickly as possible after we finally officially “get the key,” although unofficially and we’re not allowed to tell anyone, we have a key to allow access for the artisans, which has proved great for showing visitors our new abode.
Those who haven’t yet seen the house have commented that the various communications have a dearth of photos of the inside of the house. Well, quite simply there’s really not much to see, it’s basically a blank canvas, albeit a rather dirty one!
We did initially think we had a few mice that had made the most of the house being empty for the last few years and moved in! It was however, rather a mystery why the piles of droppings were confined to the corners of the rooms or under little niches. Then, when we showing an electrician around the house, out from the workshop flew what initially we thought was a small bird, but closer examination revealed it to be a bat, flitting happily around the house between all the rooms as it had obviously done for the last few years. Hopefully, shutting the interconnecting doors will discourage it in the future, but at the moment we’ll hang on to the comment made by the electrician – “In France it is considered lucky to have a bat in the house!” As with many things a bit different in France than in England, where the presence of a bat, although perhaps rather exciting, could be anything but lucky, necessitating the cessation of work and the need for a professional bat survey before being able to continue work!!
Now, it’s simply a case of wanting to get in and start the cleaning and subsequent painting – as I said above the paint (specially imported from the UK) is in the cave, waiting with baited breath. But in the meantime we’ll have to work up a sweat and hope that the back gets used to it before the enthusiasm wanes ~ that’s then the garden sorted!!!
The Garden!
Seventy plus “person hours” and we’ve hacked and sweated, pushed and pulled and been scratched and stung and have finally found the garden, well, three corners of the five it contains, and the others are within striking distance!! The jungle bashing discovered what was almost like a lost world, because as well as large head high bramble patches, there were a number of ham built animal sheds and runs; ham built but fortress-like, with multiple layers of chicken wire or thicker fencing wire, knitted together with thick wire or barbed wire strands or thick rot resistant binder twine and fastened to the uprights and random cross pieces by large staples, or bend over four inch or bigger nails. Sandwiched in the layers of wire were thin concrete slabs, corrugated iron or black plastic sheeting, with the whole held down by being set into concrete that was set into the ground, and with large areas of corrugated roofing nailed on top where the animals could sleep or roost!
The whole was then surrounded by a multi-layered fence interwoven with thick black polythene, topped with at least one strand of barbed wire. We have heard that the previous inhabitant had had a long deep-seated feud with one of the other residents of the hamlet, and it was almost as if every time the warring factions had words, another layer of “defence” was added. In a similar fashion, there are a number of hastily boarded / bricked up windows in the house, including a couple of what we see as authentic and architectural features.
But, we’ll get there; we have to, to be able to get the caravan into the garden and I’ve already started to dig up one patch of bramble / nettle roots and thistles ready for some veg planting – at the very least I want to have some courgettes and potatoes! Then one day we’ll be able to sit down under the ancient spreading vine we hacked through to, that will provide dappled shade for our new sitting area – well at times like this you need imagination and the ability to dream and maybe a sense of humour!!!
¡qué un sorpresa!
What a surprise it was indeed, as we pulled up outside our house and found that Monsieur from the chateau was back from Spain and seemingly to stay as he had put out his bins. A day or so later he realised we were back, when Toutoune went missing and was obviously around at our place, he rushed around and greeted us like long lost friend, warmly shaking my hand as I tried out my newly revised Spanish greeting and kissing Linda on both cheeks, whilst saying how pleased he was we were going to stay in St Laurent for ever, so we could be friends for ever, and telling us that even once we had moved we were now his friends and could walk in the chateau grounds whenever we wanted!
The following quick five minute chat ended up as an hour and a half cup of tea, as we picked up from last summer; it was as if he hadn’t been away for any time, let alone over seven months. It promises to be a long fun-filled summer, when we are not doing house renovations!! We also couldn’t help but feel that the poor winter weather in Spain was a good excuse, when actually spending time with us before we move, might have featured in the decision to migrant north much earlier than normal
“Ici devant nous!”
Actually this time possibly not! As the “processionary pine moth caterpillars” should really live further south, but are moving northwards, but after we moved south!!
I’m sure many of you will be aware that certain hairy caterpillars contain irritant hairs, and writing this I’m reminded of a particular campsite, in southern Brittany, where we were inundated by SAS style caterpillars that abseiled in vast numbers down from the many trees. Unfortunately, once they managed to abseil between my neck and shirt collar, then became squashed between my back and the chair making for an irritating rash for a couple of days.
But the processionary caterpillars are in a league of their own and without wishing to be alarmist – potential killers!! The first sign, in spring are light coloured web-like cocoons swinging in the tree tops. These are caterpillar nests, from which the caterpillars march out, nose to tail in single file and lines of up to sixty, to feed on pine needles, leaving a pheromone trail to find the way back to the nest.
The nests damage the trees and the advice is to carefully cut them off and burn them, but even when dead they are dangerous. The caterpillars have fine hairs on their backs which contains a protein that causes severe irritation and dermatitis and can cause anaphylactic shock to both humans and animals, and if eaten by cats and dogs can kill them so quickly that there may not be time to reach a vet. The symptoms include vomiting, swelling of the tongue, staggering and breathing difficulties. If you come across them, as we did recently, best to leave them alone as they can release these dangerous hairs with the risk of subsequent poisoning!
My original “thought!”
The English call it “Wickedness,” the French “Pleasure!” ~ the jam on the morning croissant!! I’ve always said we could learn a thing or two from the French, but on the other hand their beer isn’t as good!!
Kind regards, Best Wishes and Love,
Roger and Linda
And, next time? Whatever the spade unearths as well as fighting with a large snake!!!
