Mainly wood

D’accord

This is a bit of a long one as it has been a while I know.  Je suis desole.

Another ski trip…to the resort of Pierre St Martin which you are told is open but you get within 10 kilometres and there is still not a smidgin of the white stuff. Then if coming from Arret you begin to climb at about 60 degrees and 4 foot of snow appears like the immediacy of Harry Potter’s Whomping Willow shedding its leaves.  This time the snow started at 15 kilometres away and it was falling horizontally. The snow trucks had not kept up and passed us going down to start their day, so in the resort itself you could have been forgiven for not knowing there were roundabouts and lanes. We drove into a parking spot without seeing the 12 inch wide sink hole which our left back wheel must have gone over. By the time we came back after a powder day which kept being a powder day all day the hole had been covered up by snow and a cone put at the back of the car so thanks for the hazard warning attached to the stable door of the bolting horse. Gingerly we feel around the area we think it is so we can reverse strategically but P suddenly drops 3 feet in height on his left side – he’d found what was a sink hole. Any clues what we can fill the hole with hmmm, how about the 4 foot of snow drift that has built up against the car.  Job done and having followed the locals and lifted the windscreen wipers up so they don’t freeze to the screen we remember to put them back down but they won’t go down due to an accumulation of ice, I resort to using the ski goggle wipers on my ski gloves.  Gulping deeply we manage to reverse over the hole and set off down the mountain side..which has become so icy that as we start to slide rather than drive the windscreen wipers appear to speed up and screech panicking the ABS into action. I have to get out twice to get more ice off the wiper blades, we wait behind  two snow trucks which clearly operate like buses and have to overtake a  Frenchman driving so uncharacteristically slow we are really freaked.

Aah home, fresh bread, sloe gin, hot bath, fire, pizza. I’ll just get the tot glasses from the dining room….. you know there’s nothing like coming home to a bottle of the Yorkshire man’s home brew bramble wine having exploded across the width of the dining room with a spatter pattern worthy of any US crime drama. The dining table has a puddle underneath and the wall to the side of the explosion which is a Farrow and Ball heritage maroon colour,  now has a bramble wine maroon Dulux non-Matchpot 3 foot patch. The trajectory finishes at the distressed glass cabinet which by now is positively inconsolable. The wine is maturing in the barn.

To gentler pastimes  - shorting and backing 70 leylandii trees has won us the lumberjack chequered shirt award in recognition of battling on against all odds commonly known as briar. Now it makes sense why it took a 100 years for a dumb enough prince to turn up to rescue Sleeping Beauty or it must be that through mists of oral story telling by grandma the first case of dementia may have occurred and it slipped her memory to mention that the prince started on the edge of the forest as a rhinoceros, then at some point the good fairy that in another incarnation converted the frog into a prince, interfered and Prince Rhino was, by the centre of the briar vortex, a handsome prince without a single scratch. Anyway we’ve gone from 12 feet tall to 8 feet (shorting) and lopped the fronts and backs off to try to encourage the branches to thicken on the sides to make a more dense hedge to fight the wind back; we get some interesting breezes that signal change is in the air without Mary Poppins or Dick van Dyke shouting “cor blimey mate!”

Having written the last bit about lumberjacking, a quick update, with the fact that we have experienced 100 km winds and hailstone. I couldn’t get out to take pictures but 8 foot bamboo was blowing horizontal and a heavy duty double garden seat tucked in near the house has been blown over. There was that much wind that it was blowing in through vents to make gurgling noises in every sink, tub and shower in the house, which is a blessing as we thought it was a repeat of the bedroom ceiling episode.

And persisting with lumber jacking my hot date on the eve of Valentine’s day was M. Herve who delivers bois de chauffage, he promised to ring in the afternoon to arrange to deliver 3 stere of the stuff, this translates as I will ring you at 7 pm and turn up at 9 pm. So there I was with P shifting a quarter of a ton of fire wood into the barn at 9 p.m. Summer I can understand, light nights and all that.

Likewise the nocturnal TV man promised to ring in the afternoon which was 6.30 pm with a rendez-vous at 7.45 pm when it is so much easier to investigate the aerial position on top of the toilet to see if the dum English has done it wrong. Satisfied that was ok there were then lots of breathy whistles followed by a “C’est une grande probleme” at the state of the aerial connection in the lounge (not our own work) but possibly that of a Yorkshireman worried about the cost of coaxial cable.  And by the way the French equivalent of a careful Yorkshireman is a resident of the Auvergne, an Auvergnat. Anyway the upshot is a new freeview box. The TV in the kitchen also now works and we can watch the French equivalent of Loose Women which is just what P needs NOT, having inadvertently become a member of the studio audience of the English version while wandering aimlessly down the Thames just before we came out here.

From one type of wood to another, we are looking for armoires, we have been to four brocantes so far, ignoring the first 3 on the grounds of small fortune or pure tat; no 4… well P was beginning to think of as a figment of his imagination having noticed it while were out terrifying the locals with the Harley and on a Sunday – sacre bleu.  We went back 3 days later in the car to find it but it wasn’t until we were on our way back – 5 pm in the evening that we spotted it – just 20 minutes from home. Well I say 20 minutes  - a note for anyone looking for brocantes, owners tend to put up notices a minimum of 20 kilometres from where they actually are which is  places where there comes a point where you should abandon all hope as the municipal authorities have given up with road signs and only handwritten directions back to civilisation remain.  We asked Mr Brocante if he was open and that started the verbal flood which was clearly an indication that he had not seen anyone for the last month. Despite him clocking we were English from the car and flattering though it is for a local to think I can understand everything they say ..I struggle at 500 words a minute smattered with Basque informing us of the last 50 years of English occupation in the bottom corner of the Pyrenees Atlantique whilst wandering around a 20 by 15 foot garage, where in between what the English have been doing, we are also treated to the provenance, wood, date and interested parties of every piece of furniture we happen to pass – none of which are armoires. We emerged into the failing light disappointed but thanking our local historian for his time, when his arms start to flail to the point where we think that the concealed tank which is feeding him oxygen to maintain the pause free diatribe dialogue, has run out, but no, it turns out he does have armoires and we follow him across the road to a barn. We are so excited, he throws back huge doors, and there we have it a football sized space with furniture stacked to the ceiling with just the backs, undersides, tops or legs showing – P’s hands cover his eyes and he starts to shake his head.  Our host commences making a space, wheeling stuff on little carts to near the door, it is like building a sandcastle while the tide comes in. We are slowly squeezed behind an 18^th century settle and a very nice writing table

-“which would go in the bedroom…but it’s not an armoire”

“yes I know but you can write letters on it in your bedroom”

I don’t think I look like a character from “Room with a View” . 

The verbal assault of provenance etc etc etc of every piece of furniture continues whilst he moves table after table after table after chair, after table in order for us to get to see……………………………………… 4 wardrobes. One of which is 2k, another which has been eaten by woodworm’s answer to Mr Pastry, the third is the size of a small house even by our standards and the fourth which we can’t see because it is too far back but is from the time of Louis Napoleon AND will accommodate our hats and cravats via its side door…it has a side door, another small house then?  We take dimensions and promise to go back…it is 7.30 pm, we peer into the gloomy twilight searching for the hand painted signpost and as turn the corner we can still hear (translated from the French) “ And you know the station house in Abitain where you live, there’s an English man living there as well. But you know there are no trains there anymore!”

Time has moved on apace and we have warm weather, 22 degrees in fact, which P thinks is almost hot enough to go in the pool until a visit to St Jean de Luz and a paddle in the sea, albeit the Atlantic is slightly larger body of water. 

St Jean de Luz is a cross between Basque fishing village and Napoleonic (Third Empire) holiday destination. 

Everyone was gathered on the prom when we arrived, watching les pompiers tackle a fire at the top of one of the posh hotels. We wished we had brought our cozzies for a spot of sun worship – they were all out there – the over 60’s and a group who kept emerging in white bath robes from the health spa. 12 of them wandering up the beach behind the “look at me, I’m wonderful shooby dooby wah” health instructor whose lofty gesticulations were we presume about seaside ions. We were waiting for the big dip but only two went in in the end.  We had a paddle coupled with a sharp intake of breath.

And so we return to wood. We inherited this, 

the previous owner ran out of energy. Note the lean, after the tempetes the angles of lean became... imminnet collapse so P set to to finish it off and we have ended up with this. 

The journey has not been easy – heart attack when I nearly spiked a large toad who refused to move out. I have spiked one before accidentally and the scream is awful, especially when you carry it round to the neighbour to see if he will take it off for you, trying to not to wobble the fork as you go since it elicits the same heart rending agonising sound.  We had a sit off, as I weeded around him with a petite trowel, until P came to remove him in the soil tray. Unfortunately no pictures and he was not as pretty as the tree frogs who have taken up residence behind the shutters – they have become Monsieur et Madame Passepartout.  Anyway them aside next came the debate about to roof or not to roof – we have spare slates but the octagonal shape would make it difficult. When you sit inside it the view up to the sky is interesting so we stay as it is for now.

So now battery is going and McD waitress is looking at me ....I would like to t leave you with an abiding memory of P's favourite job...fixing toilet cisterns..but the upload takes days to get to SW France.

I will try to get a shorter one in next time.

A bientot.

xx