The chicken whisperer

So I am contemplating hiring P out as a chicken whisperer, this task will not include naming chickens for his clients.  Yes they’re here.

Those of you on FB will know recognise Jeff and Vera, except that they are now Bleep and Booster. Jeff was P's  momentary flirtation with one the main characters  (the dead one) in Randall and Hopkirk Deceased (forgive him he was only 9 when the first one was released and we were still bedazzled by colour TV).  So I had to come up with a suitable girl’s name which couldn’t be Jeanie (the heroine) because my mother’s name is Jean and we have had this discussion about not having relatives names in case one day one of them (the chickens) has to have it’s neck rung. Lamely I arrived at Vera since the only Jeff I knew with a female partner, Janet, and that should be with John except that is one of my brother's name and we are back to neck wringing and and and and …However the chemistry was lacking  every time we came to shout it I couldn’t remember them at all and P kept coming out with every name but Jeff.  So they got the last collective Proper nouns as above and we seem to have coped. There was never meant to be a male as those of you gripped and immersed in the previous story will remember P suffers from EDES or to give it it’s clinical name embryonic dippy egg syndrome.

Their arrival has not been without difficulty.. Last time I said we were having terrible trouble sourcing any chickens due to the “maladie desastre” which gave the chickens camel humps then they died. Well I had wondered about the lost in translation possibility and it turns out that SW France has the worst outbreak of chicken flu for, I think it is about 15 years. P read this on the internet whilst I was in the UK, one day after one of his Sharman’s away let’s go crazy moments which manifested itself as ordering chickens on line which come in the post from Normandy. Hell he could have been really mad and ordered Bennett

So like expectant parents we eagerly awaited our new charges who came in a pyramid shaped box with the top cut off, that’s the box not the chickens. 

3 days in an ancient Egyptian burial tomb shaped box in the dark creates a bond that can never be severed and they have never been apart since, in fact, sitting outside the pound (do I have a subliminal desire for a dog?)  in a get to know your chickens session I spilled me tea when Booster jumped Bleep in the long grass.  There have been moments when we thought that we should have called them Derby and Joan. They keep very regular hours and if we turn up a little late, though far from even vaguely dusk, they are already tucked up in the corner of the chicken house with the air of “what time do you call this”.

The avian flu thing has meant we have had to register our two birds at the Mairie for statistical purposes, we are the downward bulge in the bell curve. We turned up at the same time as Madame Supreveille, at least that’s what we think her name is. She has the farm next to us and was regaling us about one branch of her family who have had to lay off 10 workers who are employed to look after their ducks and prepare foie gras. Whilst not a great fan of the stuff and the farming techniques surrounding its production the impact on families and their livelihoods is very sad. 60% of the foie gras is exported to China and they have cancelled all exports. So they reel like the UK beef industry did when the world reacted to Mad Cows disease.  Mme Supreveille was in the doldrums contemplating what to do with her ducks, which are not numerous and not ill. 

She then brightened a little at the thought of casserole, pot au feu etc. until

we entered the Mairie when we began to wonder if Monsieur le Maire  was in tune with his electorate:

“Ah oui,  enregistrer les canards” accompanied by a laugh followed by a machine gun strafing sound and action followed by a

“Aha …les pigeons,  BOOM BOOM” accompanied by a shot gun take upward aim and shoot action .

Followed by an imaginary “Thwack, Thwack”, as Madame Supreveille knocks him to the ground with her imaginary handbag and stamped his official stamp "ou le soleil ne brille pas"

Bleep and Booster are not the only new arrivals. We have the constant baby blue tit “meep meep” in the first bird box that P put up. I have become expert on the taking of photographs of manic blue tit parent bottoms. Comme ca! (Said with upward inflection). 

 And equally expert in the taking of blurred flights to collect the take out. Comme ca! (mumbled with downward inflexion).

Then there is the Confederation of Swallows (SW France branch) annual reunion which takes place in our barn on the drying rack above the freezer and the washing machine which makes perfect surfaces to compare target practice. It is louder than a Women's Institute Handbag Tony Blair session. 

And hot off the press P has been so enamoured by the chickens that, he thought I would like another two so we have Pekin Bleu arriving soon. 

I am a little worried about the amount of conversation he is having with them when it leads to comments like:

"Damn I forgot the blue seed for the bird tits".

Wyandotte? Why Not?

The des res for the chickens is ready and we have transported it to it's location which means out of the barn, across the front of the house, 400 yards across the garden to its site.  It has been a source of dissension for the Doublavays.  We are both quite self reliant people and do not wish to ask for help but do I look like I can lift the equivalent of 4 pallets in bijou form even if we take the nest boxes off. So the local builder's wife...she of total adoration of P's building skills  has offered her husband's fork lift for the job...along with her husband. P is adamant we don't need to if I can just help him load it onto the trailer.  I don't think I have to offer him in return. I lost and this was our modus operandii

I can't imagine what the neighbours thought.

And there we were all set to go 

but it turns out according to our builder's wife friend who is helping us source the chickens, the one of the P adoration, that the lady from whom we were to get our chickens has had a very bad case of the disease that camels carry. I kid you not and did ask her to repeat the statement in which all the words desastre, dromaderie, chamel, mort and maladie occurred. Consequently no chickens. I think we are a bit early but we cannot source the ones we want from anywhere. Mrs Builder's wife has offered to have babies for us...Bantam Pekin as they are what she rears but we will have to wait until June.  That's fine as we did want some of these too but our other desire was the Wyandotte. We can't even get them on the internet and I did fancy the experience of receiving live chickens in the post. We will keep you erm...posted.

Dooblavay domestic strife has been a bit of theme as it has also occurred whilst painting. St P “Martyr of Our church of the Streak Free Wall” gets anxious when his mere follower of a wife offers to help, the badgers run for cover at the replacement hairs they will have to provide for those that have just fallen out of his brush which noticeably shakes as I take the screwdriver to the paint tin lid.

A feature wall of raspberry pink using the Crown Period Colour Tudor Rose and remaining walls to be cream which the lady in Monsieur Uno’s assured us was cream actually gave us a room akin to a packet of Dolly Mixtures, being closer to a deep red and a pale yellow.

Yellow is our bogey colour…I have a lovely pale yellow hall and landing with white wainscoting which took a number of attempts to achieve. The first tin we used which we thought was the same as the other two (it’s a big space) and why wouldn’t you because it was in the same column on the same shelf on the same row down the same aisle with the same price WAS NOT THE SAME and made you feel like you had walked inside a bottle of Sunny D. On entering our house visitors would have had to read the safety card “If you treasure your retinas do not look directly at the walls else keep your fake Ray Bans primed.

Back in our pink room, France is the only country to offer paint mixing and volume estimation on the school curriculum, so by the time they are adults les Francais can take a tub of white and add colour from a tube and Voila……….When in France,  I head for my laboratory which doubles as a scullery, determined to please. I take the red first and give a hint of white – no just using teaspoon measures in an old ice-cream tub TA DA …flamingo pink. And now for the yellow…it’s nearly Easter if Jesus can turn water into wine I’m sure I can turn yellow into cream.  A hint of white to yellow and lo there was …………..LEMON.

Hang on the previous incumbents of the property left some tins of posh Craig and Rose gold paint. I can do this for the cream at least. Stir the paint first before taking a sample. That’s strange I am not stirring vigorously, none has poured over the top on to the work surface, what’s going on. Lifting the tin reveals a running drip, onto the work surface, I clamp the tin back down and lift it again…you know how you do to double check that the disaster you thought was unfolding in front of your eyes IS unfolding in front of your eyes, across the work surface, over the edge across and into the white fronted drawers, onto the floor. Bang goes the tin back down and I dash for a.. a.. a.. a.. a.. a.. a.. a.. dinner plate. Yes a dinner plate and and.. and.. and.. and.. and..more ice cream tubs.  I wasn’t in the brownies for 6 months for nothing you know. And so I spend the next half an hour scooping, spooning, ladling and then pouring paint into pistachio flavour, raspberry ripple and Madagascan vanilla tubs. The return to my experiment – gold with a leetol beet of white makes ……………  MUSTARD.

When I return upstairs P has continued with the yellow anyway and I relate the disaster to him at which point he asks why I didn’t call for help, meanwhile the second coat of paint we are compromising and calling pinkyred which, he applied an hour ago is drying streaky. We both fume quietly and privately and we are living with it for now.

A very kind friend has suggested that with the right soft furnishings it will look good and we have been brave in our thinking outside the tin with those colours. With that in mind and some of you will know this, on account of my technological error sending a message meant for one person to half the universe, I have dug out an article from Ideal Home, November 2003 edition, don’t mock I knew it would come in useful sometime, which shows just the type of curtains I think will be sympatico.   The web site has a “contractors heading” so I have e-mailed them to ask whether they have a special service for the individual, colour illiterate customer.  I note however that they are based in Bourton on the Water which means the material will probably be the same price as one of the peasant hovels on the nearby Highrove Estate which is rented out to one of the erm…peasants called Jacintha or Algernon for a future King’s ransom. The rent agreement probably comes with a sub clause about having to consume four jars of quince jelly every month.

And on a final ranting note ...if you decide to follow a tip on using a quilt to make a soft window seat cushion just be mindful of the fact that you cannot I repeat CANNOT siphon 1 million feathers from a 1 cm slot into a bag and you will spend 2 days hoovering and 3 days washing the wool jumper you were wearing at the time.  I can only put my madcap flight of fancy down to the truly spectacular fall  as I attempted to plant myself head first in front of the lunchtime audience and ski lift operators after a successful completion of a black run...just because I was obeying the rule to slow down and couldn't.

Bonne Paques 

Philippe, Whilippe, sur, sûr, potato, potaato

Bonjour my little chipirons ,

Oui I agree it has been a long time, beaucoup des gaves sous the pont as they may say in the Bearn Patois. Tempting tho’ it is to furnish you with a brief synopsis of blogs that should have been I do not wish to bore you rigid, first time round this was the Freudian typo – frigid..appropriate when I started to write this on St Valentine’s Day, I thought.

Why now? Well I couldn’t let the moment pass without saying goodbye to the circumflex. Yes the Academie Francaise which rules on all things lingual in France has decided to banish it. A welcome move for those who do not sign language and who have been misunderstood for millennia (well since about 1740) because the sometimes there is no difference in pronunciation e.g.  “sur” -> on  and “sûr” ->  certain. For more detail:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35496893

And if you haven’t the time – it seems to boil down to monks feeling guilty about sloppy diction and so the loss of letters like S – “Pity ...INIT BRO”.

From Academie Francaise we move effortlessy to the opposite end of the spectrum culturally when yesterday whilst at the market in Navarrenx we tried to teach P’s personal cheesemonger, Marion, to say “Tighter than a duck’s arse”, I started it with “short arms and deep pockets” and he just had to lower the tone. It was in response to her recommendation for a café at a café round the corner which was “pas plus cher”. She knows more than one way to charm a Yorkshireman. The French saying is “Tonder des oeufs” which literally means  “To shear eggs”.

Anyway no such angst at the attrition of a noble language for P who, whilst understanding all that is said to him by our Gallic friends continues, through modesty primarily, to struggle to articulate his thoughts and desires. Not that this is a hindrance; he has Marion’s telephone number in case he has a cheese emergency , at any village repas the ladies of the parish have this overwhelming desire to feed him up and make sure he is well tended and the wives of the village mayor and builder swoon like Sleeping Beauty on account of our latest project.

Oh Philippe, Mon Dieu,  c’est superbe (no circumflex….never was). And his fame is spreading as we receive a request from a friend of a friend in the metropolis that is Sauveterre who has requested that her French husband come to see what P has built. Note the nesting box at the side

Not unlike Saint Valentine I have been at risk during this cause, though he was the patron saint of chocolate and martyred because he wouldn’t reduce the amount of cocoa solids in his Nipples of Venus (I think that’s true) my downfall is likely to be eggs.  

We are moving into the final stages of preparation for les poules which is the run, I find myself on the end literally of a 2.5 metre pole which is being split down the middle using a circular saw  which the previous inhabitants left us in the garage

This piece of kit is to me, what the furnace in the basement was to Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone” and I have similar trepidation when it comes to our hydraulic log splitter which according to the runaway best selling author  Lars Mytting is only used by tough old timers when they reach the age of 95.....

I digress, my job is JUST to hold the wood steady at one end. P commences feeding the jagged toothed beast, at first I feel like the fodder in a medieval trebuchet, if the physics goes wrong I am likely to be catapulted over his head to either hit double tops on the dartboard or discover whether the beams are fit for purpose as I sit astride one. As the sawing progresses I am drawn inexorably towards the jaws of death which start to “fulminate” with blue smoke, no worries, methinks that’s just friction.  P stops to allow for cooling off and a slurp of tea. We are a third of the way but resumption finds the blade refusing to spin on account of the pole not wanting to be split asunder (now I see the point of physics).  So we return to trebuchet formation starting at the other end of the pole and whilst concentrating on not having "mi skin nipped" between what is now two bits of wood I miss the aroma of burning synthetic until a brief downward glance reveals my yellow body warmer is responding warmly to the slops tray of the saw which is responding to the sawdust which appears to have spontaneously combusted. I utter a squawk... a huge sigh from P which translates to an incredulous "And your problem is?"  so all is turned off and the remainder of the Yorkshire tea is chucked on the flames for another cooling off period. The obstinate third of a length having been reached, the only answer is to cut the middle section by hand.  I am told to just hold the wood and not lean on it…I can only stop it jiggling up and down under the force of P’s sawing action if I lean on it. P makes good progress, I am approaching from behind, and he starts to get narked when the pole begins to jiggle again. This is for his own good or he will have to buy a French version of the tshirt “I do not beat my wife” the English version was in response to when like now he just hadn’t seen me standing behind him as he turned round elbows first…..initially it was a common occurrence...Bruce Armstrong of Kingston University and half the Law Department of Northumbria University can attest to my black eye/swollen cheek bone.

Yesterday's trip to Navarrenx was to offset P’s other labours one of which is lagging the loft, a king’s ransom of Kingspan would be required so we have standard loft insulation for above the ceilings and quilted tin foil to fit under the roof tiles and staple to the roof battens. 

There is a lot of contorting to achieve this…he is a big bloke trying to fit in some teeny spaces. He is valiant…I am scared witless of heights. My role in any of these situations is generally to make cups of tea and cake and at really great unpredictable heights foot the ladder. Here I find P’s grasp of physics rather flimsy for an engineer …I am never going to right a ladder with my 7 and a half stone at the bottom and his 15 stone at the top. At least he won’t be laying there undiscovered for hours/days being nibbled alive and possibly to death by the bats.

So, to return, we wandered out of Navarrenx, meandering along the picturesque Vallee d'Josbaig to Oloron Ste Marie so P could pick his own birthday chocolates from the Lindt factory outlet shop http://www.pyrenees-bearnaises.com/en/a-land-of-art-and-history/tourist-sites-and-museums/lindt-and-sprungli-master-chocolate-maker/master-chocolate-makers.htm, there seem to conflicting messages on tinterweb about whether there is a factory there or not but having grown up in a town which was home to British Oil and Cocoa Mills I can’t believe that all that chocolatey aroma is just escaping the foil wrapped chocs.  OSM is a place we regularly circumnavigate twice in our attempts to get to Gourette ski resort, Eaux Bonnes

 stunning but slightly dilapidated spa town which has suffered the effects of global warming in the form of humungous downpours, landslips and burst riverbanks and Laruns which has a creperie, Fleur de Sel, where the crepes are anything but “crape”.

After being turned away from Aux Pyrenees where the tables were rammed or reserved we seek out an alternative and then decide to walk around OSM and discover lots of crooks and nannies and an amazing  mediatheque building erected at the confluence of the Gave D’Aspe and the Gave d’Ossau. What I loved is that it is a risky place to build such a structure but it tries to harmonise with its environment by allowing the water to flow underneath it and out of outlets but they only come in to play when the water is at a specific height. A great example I think of person/persons trying to live with nature not fight it.

Proceeding with our perambulations which took us past more public conveniences than usual, I select the only foot hold pissoir and then arrive at France’s response to the Tracey Urmin Sloppy Bed..”Le Lit Ecologique

And a wrong turn to this sign 

which translates roughly to “For his/her safety (and to protect us from litigating relatives), if an old geezer or gal is trying to make a run for it at the same time as you, please alert to staff so they can let the dogs out and put the kettle on.”

And to finish off the day I persuaded P that we needed to pootle along the Valle d'Aspe to try to find the remote valley where we almost bought a house which had a moat and where I also wandered with Roisin and Finlay on a roundabout route to pick P up from Pau airport. We didn’t get quite as remote as last time but will be going back to get closer to this:

Adishatz (common au revoir)

xx