Well guilt has finally got the better of me and it’s time to put fingers to keyboard and write some stuff. Hopefully in doing so I’ll remember some of the things that I should have put in my diary - which I haven’t written up for ages either. Sadly that’s the way of it now. Once I would have been writing down things that were happening in the future but now it’s all reminders of things that have been because I’ll have forgotten in a couple of days. Not great from an organisation point of view but interesting to read at the end of the year.
So what’s happened in the last two weeks? Tons of stuff.
Most of the time (in between the normal round of life with it’s associated seasonal illnesses, working to pay the bills and needy children) has been spent concentrating on the land at Les Ollieres, which we need to get in order before the weather turns. It’s amazing how much tidying and burning there is to do there. It all looks in order from a distance but closer up it’s a different story and incredibly hard work. One day we may even get round to filling the lake up again - now that the grass seed has started to grow on the banks. We went there yesterday and all of a sudden it’s sprung up from nowhere which is is great news because apparently we need to leave it for 6 months to settle before putting any fish into it. Hopefully Alan and Neil can come over in the summer and fish nap our carp back from Ian Grey’s lake next door which has been their home for the last year and a half, although it took Ian days to catch even one fish last time he was over so it may take more than two of them. Apart from anything else they’ll both be legless on homemade cider by about 11am and scaring the pond life away with raucous laughter.
We planted an avenue of 30 sycamore trees there too at the weekend which was incredibly satisfying work, especially for me who was doing a bit of light digging and filling in the holes- less so for Matt who had to put in the 2m20 chestnut stakes with a lump hammer.
We managed to plant 16 whilst the kids were playing football and missed Etienne’s ( who is a defender) glory goal of the season and perhaps his whole footballing career. Matt’s shoulder was killing him for days after so we got Alfie in to help later in the week with the other trees and he did them in about half the time with youth and a post driver on his side. For the first time ever Matt has conceded that it’s time to pass the mantle to the next generation and butt out of trying to do anything physical. He spent the day plastering yesterday and couldn’t move either of his shoulders today. You know it’s getting serious when it’s a struggle to pick up a glass.
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Talking of Alfie - he found treasure in the chimney of the fireplace at Bort the other day. He saw something glinting in the chimney breast and thought it might be a Napoleonic coin or something as exciting.
Everyone who has bought an old house in France will have been through the same thing at some point in their renovating career as the air is thick with rumours of peasants bricking up their treasures behind fireplaces and then dying and leaving them there.
Sadly we’ve never found even a centime but Alfie got his tools out and after a lot of patience(which is a first for him), managed to work the coin out, only to discover that it was an old freemason’s token with exactly the same hammer and chisel motif on it as the ones he had used to work it free.
Obviously he took that as a sign that he was destined to claim the house as his own, which is handy. It has a view of the Chateau of Montbrun and he was asked over by the owner last week to see about repairing a stone cross for the roof.
The whole area round there is full of mystery and glamour. Not only are the innards of Richard Coeur de Lion to be found under a burial mound at the side of the chateau but it was also there that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie twice visited with a view to buy and things don’t get much more glamorous than that in these parts. I think I mentioned in a blog at the time that the neighbour was telling us that Brad ‘Pip’ had been spotted in La Taverne - the Chateau’s bar/restaurant
Anyway I’ve got to stop writing now - there’s an increasingly irrate queue for the computer.