life in the Limousin

Alan’s not around to blog today but did Friday’s instead. You may have worked that out already or may not as the author’s name doesn’t seem to appear automatically anymore. If anyone understands how to go about doing this I would be very gratefull for the information. Also another distressing and apparently unsurmountable problem is the fact that there isn’t any way back onto the website from the blog - although for those of us doing the writing there is. All very confusing. Again, if anyone knows how to do this could they please leave a comment because I I’ve spent hours trying to work it out today and have got nowhere and this isn’t a day to be inside worrying over technology - although after 5 mins on the hamac at 4.30pm and I was back inside as it was too hot. Now two hours later and I may go out again and have another shot at sunbathing whilst the kids are still out at their friend’s.

In exchange for all of the comments I’m sure will come flooding in I’m going to share this very useful link which a friend Julian told us about. Although hopes may initially be dashed ( I think Matt’s were) in that the title isn’t wholly representative of the material on offer what there is is literally priceless and helps to make sense of the chaos which is french bureaucracy.

Having just spent the most boring hour and a half of the year so far, sitting in the cantine of the college in Chalus, where we were being taken through every last detail of Etienne’s imminent move to 6ieme in September I don’t feel I have anything left to give.
However, having taken some more seasonal photos today to put on the website - notably on pages ‘index’ and ‘land’, and made an attempt to brighten up the whole thing generally, spreading the word is the least I can do - lest it should go unnoticed! It can’t get much worse than the bare twig and iced water combo of the last photo. On the down side I’ve just clicked on it and it takes forever to download. Still it looks summery when it finally appears and a fair indication of the weather we’ve been having recently.
So instead of whittering on you can spend the time you would have spent reading the blog looking at the new website.
If that doesn’t rock your boat there’s still this to read. I know I’ve gone on about it before but it seriously has to be the funniest thing you’ll ever read. Sadly the person who does it has taken to twittering so the posts are now few and far between. God knows what twittering entails but I think it involves sharing the dull details of your day with people you don’t know. Barely believable I know…..

Following on from Alan’s blog on Sunday when he was lamenting the loss of things English when living over here, I’d like to share the address of a delivery service - www.sterlingshopping.co.uk - which we heard about last week from a friend Martin. Not only can you pay in sterling ( as the name suggests) but you can order groceries online from the English supermarkets and have it delivered to their address. They deliver every two weeks to a drop off point in either Limoges, Perigueux, Chalus or Bergerac. They will also bring over DIY stuff and can deliver to the door for an extra charge. I haven’t done it myself yet but have looked at the website and they seem very professional. Martin picked up a delivery last week and couldn’t believe the amount of food he got for his money. Obviously I’m not trying to encourage English people in France to stock up on British fare and not shop locally but for things like curry pastes and other foodstuffs too exotic for the French taste then it’s indispensible. Even if we could do in the past no one can afford 4€80 for a jar of lime pickle…..and then there are crumpets to think about - which frankly the French will never understand.

Re yesterday’s blog I forgot to mention that the top photo was of a cuttlefish - not the very top one obviously, which was clearly a swan fashioned from a 70’s hand towel, but the top one of the aquarium ‘footage’. There would have been literally hundreds of snaps more to trawl through but after about the first 70 or so photos a voice came over the tannoy, asking people not to use the flash of their cameras. I was mortified when I realised that I, and only I, had been blinding the sealife for atleast half an hour wthout even thinking about it and shuffled into a corner out of shame and in an attempt to change the settings on the camera. Matt managed to work it out after several attempts but wiped off all of the previous photos in so doing, which was a small price to pay and a bonus for everyone who has to look at them as the funniest fish were obviously saved for last.
I spent ages waiting for this fish to swim past. Louis tells me that it’s called a Napoleon, so it may or may not be.

The highlight of my day came in the form of a comedy sword fish

and Louis’ in the shape of a shark

I don’t think that I need to describe the hotel we stayed in at the weekend. The towel swan tells it’s own tale……

……..although sometimes the eyes can deceive, as with this photo of Matt lying resplendent on the beach:

To anyone who wasn’t there it would seem like a nice sunny afternoon perfect for sunbathing, whereas, in reality, there was a wicked westerly with a wind chill factor of about -1°c and meant that as soon as I’d taken the snap it was back on with the towels, which we lay coiled up in the whole time like a couple of OAP’s in travel blankets. What made it worse was that no one else seemed even slightly concerned by the cold and lay around in swim wear and the kids played for about 4 hours jumping waves in the sea, refusing to admit that it was cold either, before we managed to cajole them into going somewhere warmer.
We have been to this same beach before, a couple of years back, and it was exactly the same then too. In fact it was so windy that we actually hired a sunbed to use as a windbreak and lay on the sand behind it. We thought then that it must have been freak weather but on asking around it seems that it’s quite common so I think it’ll be the second and last time we go there.
Luckily the place, which is called Chatelaillon Plage ( for anyone wishing to avoid it), is only about 15mins south of La Rochelle so the next day we went to the Aquarium there and in the afternoon, before driving back, to the Centre Aquatique back in Chatelaillon Plage - which has a terrifying slide which drops almost vertically and kept the kids happy for a couple of hours - during which time I positioned myself in the jacuzzi and didn’t move until we left.

When we got back home yesterday at around 6pm ( the journey having taken only 2hr 15mins, despite Mappy saying that it would take 3hr 30mins, which is quite outrageously wrong!) the weather appeared the same - being sunny but cloudy, but the lack of wind made all the difference and it was straight onto the terrace for aperos. I don’t know what it is about wind but it’s completely disorienting and life quickly becomes one long battle of trying to shut it out. We tried to sit at a bar and have a drink but the tablecloths were blowing all over the place, as were the glasses, so we gave up. When we went down to Orange, earlier in the year, the Mistral had been blowing and I can quite easily understand the rumours that it drives people either mad or to suicide.
Anyway we’re now back home where outdoor sitting is entirely possible and appropriate behaviour for a summer’s eve - with the added bonus that the bellowing bull has been moved to another field, where hopefully for it, the grass is greener. .
Congratulations to Alan by the way for doing the right thing and being rewarded for it in yesterday’s morality tale for the 21st Century. I can see a film coming out of this - especially when it transpires that the eccentric businessman, who is without an heir, has set up the whole ruse in order to find a worthy successor to his multi-million pound empire and having set up a meeting drops the bombshell to Al that he has won that honour. He and Mel then live in peace and happiness forever more. Or has that already been done by Roald Dahl…..?

Today we realized that the French roads we travel are getting busier, indeed we may soon have grounds for complaint because no less than 5 cars passed us this morning on our daily drive from Bort to St Pardoux, and three of those were British no doubt spending the extra Euros the pound now buys. If you should know Mervin King please ask him to keep his mouth shut!

This week we passed another milestone in the house refurb’, we opened up the wall between the kitchen (ex. garage) and the salon. I was worried the wall above might collapse but it did not move 1mm. Yesterday we had our first large delivery of building materials, a complete very large lorry load. The driver was very pleasant and helpful with the unloading, a revelation in customer relations.

We needed some flat stones to bed the very large oak lintels over the new opening, and next to our rented house in Bort is a stone ruin owned by Jean Pierre, our French neighbour who has always lived in the hamlet, and he agreed to sell us just the ones we needed. He also invited Ann and me for a drink in his farmhouse. We got on to the subject of fishing and shooting, his passions, and he produced a preserved head of a huge pike he had caught in a local lake last year, I could have put my hand in its mouth, but the teeth would not have let it out. He also showed us a photo of another he had caught recently it weighed 10 kilos and was over a meter long, not a tall fishing story. You should see the stuffed boars’ head he has over his mantle piece!

Just realised the last blog we did promised to be followed by more of our life story, so be glad that I forgot that and you have not had to read it.

I thought I’d published this last night but I was so desperate to get to the tv for the last episode of Occupation that I didn’t wait to see if it had - and it hadn’t. So here it is this morning which means that it now becomes todays. Oh well.
So following on from the people coming to look at the house on Tuesday …….
Matt phoned the estate agent the following day, as non of them bother to call with any feedback – actually Piegut Immobilier do send a written account of the response to the viewing but that’s not until weeks later - and anyway it wasn’t them.
The estate agent said that they had really liked it and had sat with her in the office discussing the house until 8.30pm. The major problem, however, was that one of the essentials on their list was a workspace of 50m² to set up a sewing workshop. Quite why they’d been brought here then I don’t know as plainly we don’t have such a thing. This was a requirement of the old woman who, grey hair in a bun and about 70yrs of age, was clearly the mother to the young man with her who was in his 30’s and sported a rather dashing pony tail. Not so. It transpires that they were married. I told Etienne the next day and he was so shocked that he didn’t speak for about 10 minutes.
‘Well at least they don’t have any children’, he said finally.
‘Au contraire’ was the only correct reply. Five was the number mooted by the estate agent, but one can only hope that this is a second marriage and the kids thing was already done.
In conclusion they haven’t followed it up but it’s probably for the best as I don’t think the neighbours are ready for characters as vivid as the seamstress and her toy boy in their village just yet.

The latest news – at 9pm – is that I have just booked a night in a hotel on a beach for Saturday evening in Chatelaillon Plage which is on the west coast just beneath La Rochelle. All a bit of a mix up as I thought Saturday was the 21st, which is the Fete de la Musique over here, and the last time we went to Chatelaillon there was a stage set up in the park and loads of bands on. It seems we’ll have to make do with the daytime beach activities instead and find something nearer to home on Sunday.
The whole reason for going at all stems from the fact that we were in the process of booking a last weekend at Siblu, before the promos finished, only to find when I phoned to book, that they already had and that it was not only quite a bit more expensive than we can afford – for that read anything over 0.50c at the moment – but also that going for the 3 night deal would mean having to miss Mr Lapouge’s leaving ‘do’ which starts at 8pm tomorrow night( tonight now) in the Salle de Fetes in Champsac as well as half a day at school on Friday and Monday.’
Mr Lapouge is Louis’ current teacher and Etienne’s old one and is retiring next week. It’s supposed to be a surprise happening and will involve, not only having a ‘pot’ with him (ie drinking) but there is also a rumour of a bit of dancing and djembe ….and we all have to bring a cake. So it’s hotting up to be one of Champsac’s events of the year - although partying is pretty high on the village’s agenda already and we seem to have something on just about every week at the salle de fete from the Fete de Voisins to the always over subscribed ‘Bal masqué’.
As he is a Liverpool fan – of all the fool things to be– the boys are going to give him one of their Man U mugs as an apt momento of better times to come.